Month: June 2021

The new media company spinning off from the merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery will imaginatively be called–wait for it: Warner Bros. Discovery. According to The Wall Street Journal, the merger between the two companies won’t be finalized and fully integrated until sometime in 2022.

Discovery CEO David Zaslav will be in charge of the merged group, which will marry WarnerMedia’s formidable roster of iconic characters and properties with Discovery’s sizable archive of unscripted shows and growing businesses sports business in Europe and also news. AT&T shareholders will own 71% of the new company. Zaslav announced the new name Tuesday from a town hall with WarnerMedia employees from the Warner Bros. studio’s Burbank lot, alongside WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar.

“Warner Bros. Discovery will aspire to be the most innovative, exciting and fun place to tell stories in the world–that is what the company will be about,” Zaslav said in a statement. “We love the new company’s name because it represents the combination of Warner Bros.’ fabled hundred year legacy of creative, authentic storytelling and taking bold risks to bring the most amazing stories to life, with Discovery’s global brand that has always stood brightly for integrity, innovation and inspiration.”

Zaslav added that the hope for the Warner Bros. Discovery family will be to make it “the best and most exciting place in the world to tell big, important, and impactful stories across any genre–and across any platform: film, television, and streaming.”

The company’s tagline will be, “the stuff that dreams are made of,” which is a nod to the 1941 Warner Bros. film, The Maltese Falcon.

Ben 10 and Minecraft have finally crossed over, and the results are now live on the Minecraft Marketplace. Based on a blog post announcing the move, the DLC pack includes both bespoke story content as well as additions to the game’s Free Roam mode.

In the new Story Mode, Ben, Gwen, and Grandpa Max need to recover lost alien DNA from the Omnitrix. Apparently, it’s pretty easy to lose some alien DNA when you can turn into hundreds of different forms. Ben can transform into many different alien heroes across the adventure to defeat foes such as Vilgax, Zombozo, and Kevin 11, who is 10% more powerful than Ben according to our calculations.

If you’re just looking to check out all of Ben’s alien forms, you can jump into the Free Roam mode to give them a test drive. It seems that Ben’s various outfits will give him interesting powers, such as the ability to fly, or to move quickly. Additionally, you can grab Ben’s shirt as a free character creator item.

In other Minecraft news, the game recently received new content through its Caves and Cliffs Part 1 update, which added a new goat mob to the game, among other things. It also got another high-profile crossover in the form of How To Train Your Dragon content.

AMD has announced that it plans to release FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) on June 22. The new supersampling technology serves as competition to Nvidia’s DLSS technology, boosting performance and image quality for games that support the technology.

Unlike Nvidia’s DLSS – an image upscaling technology using AI to upscale lower resolution images and make them appear at a higher resolution without a significant amount of extra performance – AMD says FidelityFX Super Resolution does not require machine learning.

FidelityFX Super Resolution is open-source, according to AMD, meaning the technology will also run on Nvidia’s graphics cards, including the GTX 10-series, which currently does not support Nvidia’s DLSS technology.

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Discussed during AMD’s presentation at Computex 2021, FidelityFX Super Resolution will include four different image upscaling modes: Ultra Quality, Quality, Balanced, and Performance. Ultra quality and Quality will focus on achieving a higher image quality, while Balanced and Performance modes will focus on increasing the frame rate in games.

AMD also demonstrated a test with FidelityFX Super Resolution, running Gearbox Software’s Godfall using an RX 6800 XT graphics card. During the test, Godfall was running at 150FPS while in FidelityFX Super Resolution’s Performance preset, while the other presets ran the game at 124FPS (Balanced), 99FPS (Quality), and 78FPS (Ultra Quality). During each test, the game was set to the ‘epic’ graphical setting with ray tracing enabled, which normally runs at 49FPS natively.

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To showcase that the FidelityFX Super Resolution will also run on Nvidia GPUs, AMD also tested the technology using a GTX 1060 with the same game running in 1440p at 38FPS when enabling FSR’s quality mode.

Nevertheless, this is AMD’s own in-house testing and should be taken with a grain of salt, but with the technology launching later this month, we will not have to wait much longer to see how it stacks up with DLSS.

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Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

One of WWE’s most popular tag teams, The New Day, debuted some glitzy Power Rangers-themed gear on Raw.

Main Event Gear, a leading supplier of in-ring and entrance gear to professional wrestlers, shared a snap on Instagram of New Day’s Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston wearing Power Rangers tailored threads designed by Jonathan Davenport. Woods donned an outfit inspired by the White Ranger, while Kingston unleashed the Green Ranger into the ring. Check out the glitzy gear below:

The Instagram post contains a carousel of images revealing the design process and pop culture inspiration behind the duo’s new gear. The designs incorporate similar features to the costumes worn by the fist-pumping, multicolored superheroes, with shiny striped embellishments all over the outfits, winged shoulders, and a Rangers-style belt paired with matching boots and gloves.

Over the years, Woods and Kingston have delivered some entertaining entrances on the way to the ring. In particular, Woods is known for pumping up the crowd by breaking out his trademark trombone Francesca as a prelude to The New Day’s chant, so it’s only right that the iconic instrument would also receive the makeover treatment, with a design similar to the White Ranger’s enchanted Saba.

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The New Day has displayed their love of video games and pop culture inside and outside of the ring. In fact, it was announced last year that Woods and Kingston, along with Big E would be coming to Gears 5 as playable DLC characters, with a promo image showing the group decked out in Cog armor ready to take on Locust. The WWE tag team also brought a Final Fantasy 14 collaboration to Wrestlemania 32.

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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

If you’ve been paying attention over the last few years, you know Sony kicks off a pretty massive sales event every year in the lead-up to E3, and this year is no exception. The annual Days of Play savings even is live right now, and you can save big on PlayStation games to add to your backlog.

The Sony Days of Play sale runs from now until June 9, and features really awesome deals on PS4 and PS5 games alike. You can also save on accessories like the PS5 HD camera, and get PlayStation Classics for just $9.99.

Given how massive these sales are, we’ve linked to the Days of Play event pages below, with all the sales, and pulled out a few highlights from each retailer. For those in the UK, check out the best Days of Play deals in the UK.

PlayStation Plus 12-Month Deal

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Best Buy Sony Days of Play Deals

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Amazon Sony Days of Play Deals

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Walmart Sony Days of Play Deals

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GameStop Sony Days of Play Deals

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PlayStation Direct Days of Play Deals

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Perhaps it comes as no surprise, but this year there isn’t a special-edition Days of Play PlayStation 5. Given the fact you probably still can’t get a PS5, with shortages predicted into next year, it’s understandable. We’re watching out for PS5 restocks and sharing them on the IGN Deals Twitter account, but even the most vigilant of PS5 watchers are having a hard time getting one. They come and go quickly.

Maybe next year we’ll get our first special edition Days of Play PS5. We can certainly hope. I wouldn’t mind if it’s just a variation of the new DualSense controller colors, to be perfectly honest.

We’re updating this page as more retailers go online with their Days of Play deals, so keep checking back.

Crytek has announced that remasters of Crysis 1, 2, and 3 will be bundled together as the Crysis Remastered Trilogy and as standalone purchases in Fall 2021.

Crytek shared the details of this new and enhanced collection that is being optimized in partnership with Saber Interactive, revealing that it will be available on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC. All three Crysis games will play “even smoother” on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

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Crysis Remastered was released in 2020 after a delay due to mixed fan reaction to leaked footage of the game. Many reacted positively to the improved visuals, and it’s safe to assume these new remasters will benefit from the troubles of the first.

In addition to a number of visual improvements, the first Crysis also included “high-quality textures up to 8K, HDR support, temporal anti-aliasing, Screen Space Directional Occlusion (SSDO), Global Illumination (SVOGI), state-of-the-art depth fields, new light settings, motion blur, parallax occlusion mapping, Screen Space Reflections and Shadows (SSR & SSS) as well as new and updated particle effects and more.” Furthermore, Crysis Remastered featured ray tracing on PCs with Nvidia RTX GPUs, Xbox One X, and PS4 Pro.

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In our review of Crysis, we said in 2007 that was “one of, if not the, most stunningly beautiful games we’ve ever seen. But even beyond that, it’s a pretty fantastic shooter.”

In our review of Crysis 2, we said that “It plays well, encourages creative problem-solving, and confidently delivers a series of escalating and changing encounters and scenarios that will push you to think in a way few shooters have in an era of increasingly funneled experiences.”

In our review of Crysis 3, we said that it is “a highly polished shooter experience that doesn’t so much reinvent the FPS wheel as give it a slicker set of tyres.”

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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.

Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher studio CD Projekt has released its latest earnings report for Q1, and total profit dropped substantially.

CD Projekt made a profit of 32.487 million zloty, which is down sharply from the 91.979 million zloty that the company made during the January-March period of 2020. Total revenue, however, climbed to 197.632 million zloty for Q1 2021. The profit decrease was attributable in part to an increase in the cost of goods sold.

CD Projekt also reminded people that 2020’s Q1 results were the strongest in the company’s history, fueled in part by stay-at-home orders that saw people turn to games. Not only that, but in Q1 2020, The Witcher game sales rose by 500% thanks to Netflix’s hugely successful TV show, while The Witcher 3 for Nintendo Switch was just recently released at the time, all of which contributed to strong results for CD Projekt at the time.

These factors have since “subsided,” CD Projekt said.

For Q1 2021, CD Projekt said the majority of its revenue came from Cyberpunk 2077 and sales of The Witcher 3 and its expansions. Gwent and Thronebreaker also contributed to sales during Q1 2021, as did The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and the original Witcher game.

According to Reuters, CD Projekt financial boss Piotr Nielubowicz said on a conference call that around 60% of total sales in Q1 came from Cyberpunk 2077.

The studio also addressed how Cyberpunk 2077 remains unavailable on the PlayStation Store. An official for the company said there is no change from last week’s update.

“The general situation as long as we are not back on the Sony store has not changed. One of the leading marketplaces for us is not available and we generate most of the sales on the PC/digital channels,” the person said.

Despite the delisting, Cyberpunk 2077 managed to sell 13.7 million copies across all platforms in its first 21 days.

Finally, CD Projekt management confirmed on the call that it will begin developing multiple “high-budget” games at the same time starting in 2022. Additionally, the company is on the lookout for M&A (mergers and acquisition) possibilities going forward, though the company did not offer any specifics about what it’s looking for in that department.

CD Projekt management has said it will not abandon Cyberpunk 2077 and will instead continue to support the game with patches and updates to help improve the experience so the game can continue to sell for a long time.

Seemingly as a result of the issues with Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt adjusted its plans for a multiplayer offering, and now it’s unclear if that standalone game will ever release.

More recently, CD Projekt was revealed to have paid its executives millions in bonuses that were tied to the commercial performance of the game. Developers, too, received bonuses thanks to Cyberpunk 2077’s strong sales.

In 2021, more so than any other year, it’s difficult to predict what games and announcements will be made—but that won’t stop the GameSpot After Dark team from trying. In this video Tamoor, Jean-Luc, Lucy, and AbleGamers’ Steve Spohn discuss some of the things we can reasonably expect to see at the show, including Halo: Infinite, which is pretty much a dead cert for the Microsoft and Bethesda showcase. The team has a little fun with the prediction and try and come up with fun crossover opportunities they’d

By Tamoor Hussain , Lucy James , Jean-Luc Seipke , Steve Watts , and Erick Tay on June 1, 2021 at 8:00AM PDT

On top of that, there’s the potential to see Gotham Knights and Suicide Squad from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, but then again WB may be saving those for its DC Fandom event. For Square Enix’s part, the next entry in the Final Fantasy series could make its return to the press conference stage. Other games the team would love to see are the Dragon Age and, if the announcement gods will it, the next Mass Effect.

Tamoor, Jean-Luc, Lucy, and Steve also throw out some of their fantasy picks for what they want to see, which includes some expected but also very unexpected picks.