Author: Trafficblast

A new image discovered by ResetEra users reveals that a cloud version of Resident Evil 3 Remake could be coming to the Nintendo Switch.

Nintendo has dabbled in cloud gaming to bring games that likely otherwise wouldn’t be playable on the Switch to the console. It began with Resident Evil 7 in 2018 and was followed up by Assassin’s Creed Odyssey later that year. Those two cloud games were only playable in Japan but yesterday, Nintendo launched Control on Switch as a cloud game and revealed that the upcoming Hitman 3 would be a cloud game on Switch a well. RE3 might be the next game if the image below is any indication.

The image above was discovered in this ResetEra thread by user Jqui, as reported by Kotaku, and it was found on the the website used by the company behind the Switch’s cloud capabilities, Ubitus GameCloud. It’s important to note that the existence of this image doesn’t necessarily imply a cloud version of RE3 is coming. Perhaps it was in the works but has since been canned. Perhaps it’s a mock up image for the simple possibility.

It’s anybody’s guess at this point, but it matches earlier rumors this year after modders discovered code in the demo that references the Switch back in March. Game analyst Daniel Ahmad said around that same time that a cloud version for Switch was being explored, but that there were no plans for a native version.

If you’re looking to test out how a potential RE3 cloud version might run on Switch, you can try the cloud version of Control right now. Sometime in the future, you’ll be able to play Hitman 3 on the Switch as a cloud game as well, although there’s not currently a release date for that. In the meantime, check out our Switch cloud gaming wiki and then check out our Resident Evil 3 Remake guide for any and all questions you might have about the game.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN who made the site’s guide for Resident Evil 3. He would love if you checked it out. Follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.  

Sony will seemingly continue to release new PS4 games for the next few years, after SIE CEO Jim Ryan explained that it’s “crucial” to keep the console’s huge audience of owners “engaged and happy”.

Speaking to GamesIndustry, Ryan explained that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic – and the boost given to many gaming brands as a result of so many more people staying home – has caused the company to reassess how it looks at serving owners of its soon-to-be last-gen console:

“Obviously, our eyes and our horizons have lifted with regards to what’s possible with that PS4 community, based on what we’ve observed over the last six months. That can be quite powerful, because in 2021, 2022… that PS4 community that we’ve spoken about, they will be the vast majority of people on PlayStations during that time. It is crucial that we keep them engaged and happy. And the last six months have demonstrated that we could do that to an extent that we didn’t think possible when we were setting our minds pre-COVID.”

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That may explain the recent shift in public philosophy we’ve seen from PlayStation regarding its PS5 exclusives. As recently as May, Ryan gave an interview in which he said he’d prefer developers to “make the most” of PS5’s features, seemingly above making games that work across two generations of console. However, we subsequently saw the likes of Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Horizon: Forbidden West announced for PS5 and PS4, which appears to push against that ideal somewhat.

From a business standpoint, it’s not an enormous surprise, of course – Sony’s sold over 100 million PS4 consoles, meaning PS5 will have a far smaller market for years to come. That said, the company’s aiming high with its new hardware, saying it hopes to sell more PS5s in its first fiscal year than PS4 managed.

Ryan’s clearly energised for the next generation, saying, “It’s really exciting now. We are right on the brink. Everybody is four or five years into this, and it’s really great to be so close to the big moment. You know, I’ve done them all, and this has easily been the most extraordinary of any of them.”

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Preorders for the PlayStation 5 are currently sold out, but if more go up they’ll be in our PS5 preorder guide right away. For everything you need to know about PlayStation 5, check out our PS5 guide.

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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Full spoilers follow for this episode.

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After a brief misstep last week, Star Trek: Discovery finds its groove again with “People of Earth,” which properly reunites Sonequa Martin-Green’s Burnham with her long-lost (from her perspective anyway) crewmates on the Disco. Along the way, the episode also manages to feel particularly Star Trekkie, like its story of the week could’ve been plucked right out of The Original Series or The Next Generation.

A brief log entry from Burnham catches us up on the year that she has spent in the “future” of the 32nd century. Not knowing when, or if, the Discovery would ever show up, she had no choice but to adapt to the time and place where she found herself, becoming a partner to Book (David Ajala) and working as a courier while scrounging up dilithium scraps and attempting to determine what caused the galaxy-shaking The Burn, the devastating event which essentially led to the end of the Federation as we know it.

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What a lovely scene it is when Burnham is reunited with her friends in the transporter room, with director Jonathan Frakes pouring on the warmth as his camera gets lost amid the characters while they take turns hugging the emotional Michael. Even Michelle Yeoh’s Georgiou, who was particularly grating last week, gets a nice beat here, with her simply staring at Burnham from across the room saying tons.

Another long-wondered about moment comes shortly thereafter, as Saru (Doug Jones) officially becomes captain of the Discovery. No more “acting” in that rank! Of course, Disco has been fluid with its captains, first giving us Lorca (who, at this point, we’ll almost certainly never see gain, non-Mirror version or not) and then Pike. And the question of whether Saru or Burnham would take over in this new time period has had fans guessing since the end of Season 2, but here Burnham, changed by her experiences of the past year, just hands it to Saru, saying, “I don’t know if it’s ever been me.” Huh. Not very Burnham like, actually.

One might say Tilly’s wall of badges commemorating those who’ve been lost is a little too reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica’s memorial hallway, though then again isn’t it just a natural display of grief? And it also, thanks to Mary Wiseman’s performance, drives home the gulf of time that has separated the crew from their lives back home. Sadly, she also senses a gulf between the Burnham she knew yesterday and the one standing before her today.

And that continues to be a thread throughout this episode, as Burnham confronts the reality of being part of Starfleet again — albeit a Starfleet of basically one ship — after living the life she’s led for the past year. It’s not the most convincing aspect of “People of Earth,” however, as a year doesn’t seem like that long a time. Then again, we don’t really know what she’s been through since we last saw her, though Georgiou sees that Michael has changed and is seemingly egging her on to follow her newfound feelings of independence. (Notably, Michael doesn’t put on a Starfleet uniform until she’s forced to as a form of disguise.)

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But there are more pressing matters to deal with. The Discovery still has its spore drive, which means Michael can finally return to Earth. And what do you know? When they get there, the crew learns that Earth is no longer part of the Federation. And indeed, nobody seems to even know where (what’s left of) the Federation and Starfleet are these days. The Earth government is seemingly more concerned with fighting off dilithium “raiders” than anything else, reminding us how small and petty the galaxy has become.

It’s another case this season of Burnham and Saru and the rest being shocked — shocked! — by how things have turned out, but everything winds up coming together rather nicely in a very classic Star Trek way as our heroes realize that the pirates they’ve been fighting off are actually human as well, the desperate remnants of a long-forgotten Earth colony on Saturn’s moon Titan. Of course, this kind of situation is a Starfleet specialty, and Burnham and Saru are forging a new peace between the two as quickly as you can say Organia. Who says the Federation isn’t around anymore?

And then there’s Blu del Barrio, who makes their debut as Adira here. A seeming engineering prodigy and busybody, Adira turns out to actually be a teenage human who somehow is carrying a Trill symbiont within them. (Deep Space Nine fans know what this is all about.) The character appears to be the next clue to the Disco crew’s tracking down Starfleet, and del Barrio is well-served here, bouncing off of Anthony Rapp’s Stamets in what will hopefully become a recurring friendship (and maybe even mentorship?).

The episode culminates with a great bit as Tilly and the bridge crew return to the former site of Starfleet headquarters to find the same tree they once used to study under, only some 900 years older (and, no doubt, bigger). The more things change…

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Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:

• “Time travel, man.”
• So dilithium didn’t just go kablooey in The Burn, but it had also become scarce in the years prior to that disaster.
• Also, alternatives to warp drive didn’t prove viable, which seems surprising considering we know of other types of interstellar travel in the Star Trek universe. (Uh, spore drive anyone?)
• Only millions died in The Burn? That actually seems like a relatively small number, all things considered.
• Those repair robots fixing the ship, and which are also part of the opening credits this season, have been seen before. Called the DOT-7s, we saw them repairing the Enterprise in last year’s finale, “Such Sweet Sorrow: Part 2,” as well as in, of course, the animated Short Trek “Ephraim and Dot.”
• Love that black alert sound!
• David Ajala’s Book is back this week, and has some fun business as a sort of sidekick to Michael, but the two do part ways by episode’s end. One wonders what circumstances will lead to his return…

It seems like Black Friday starts earlier and earlier each year. Actually, it doesn’t “seem” that way, it really is starting earlier. No longer confined to a single day, or even an entire week, retailers are kicking off the holiday shopping season with Black Friday pricing right now. Best Buy Black Friday deals on video games are already live, plus tons more early Black Friday prices.

Best Buy has a really excellent selection of Black Friday deals on 4KTVs happening right now, and they’re legit. You can bring home a 75″ TCL 4K Android TV for $499 right now, or save big on one of the amazing LG CX models. The LG CX is among our picks for the best 4KTV for PS5 or Xbox Series X gaming, and three different sizes are marked down as part of this deal.

Black Friday 4KTV Deals

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It’s important to note, these are Black Friday prices, not THE Black Friday sale at Best Buy. It’s basically a preview of what’s coming next month. With the next generation consoles looming on the horizon, upgrading your TV makes sense, especially at these prices. Or if you just want to bring home a 75″ TCL for $499, I’m wholly supportive of your decision.

 

With Nvidia’s own RTX 3070 Founders Edition out the door, it’s time to take a look at the other unique spins making their way to the market, beginning with the RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio from MSI. This graphics card features a triple-fan design, bright and blingy RGB, and a factory overclock right out of the box. Coming to market at $569, is it the 3070 for you?

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MSI RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio – Design and Features

Compared to the Founders Edition, the Gaming X Trio feels downright massive. It’s almost identical to MSI’s RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio in size. In fact, taking in its overall design, it’s nearly identical in almost every way. It features the same improved thermal solution (over last generation), the same angular shroud, RGB placement, and backplate design. I happen to like the aggressive, sharp look, but it’s far from understated.

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The RGB lighting alone is likely to be polarizing. A long diffusion strip runs along the upper edge of the backplate and the LEDs shine bright. You can customize it to match the look of your rig, choose from a handful of preset effects, or disable it entirely if RGB isn’t your thing. As you can tell from the picture above, there’s a bit of hot-spotting due to the brightness of the LEDs. It looks decent, but not great, and if you’re not already sold on RGB, this won’t be the card that convinces you. There’s also a trio of strips slashing the middle fan for a bit of extra flair if you opt for a vertical GPU mount.

Like the RTX 3080 and 3090 versions of this card, it also sports MSI’s new Tri Frozr 2 cooling system. This is a three-part system that combines its new Torx 4.0 fans, high contact heat pipes, a graphene backplate, and Wave-curved 2.0 fin edges along its massive heatsink to disrupt airflow, enhance cooling, and reduce noise. MSI also includes an anti-sag bracket to support the weight of this heavy cooler. In practice, it works wonderfully on the RTX 3070, dropping temperatures a full 10C cooler than the Founders Edition for a peak of only 67C. The fans never ramped above 49% either, which allowed the card to be quiet and blend in with the rest of my system.

Under the hood, the RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio is packing the same improved Ampere architecture as the original Nvidia RTX 3070 Founders Edition, but features a factory overclocked Boost Clock of 1830 MHz. Thanks to Nvidia’s auto-overclocking GPU Boost technology, however, it performed well beyond this, typically hovering just shy of 2GHz while gaming. This technology is based on thermal and power limitations, so the larger heatsink and dual 8-pin power headers offer it an advantage out of the gate compared to the FE which uses a smaller heatsink and an adapted single 8-pin connector.

Like all RTX 3070s, it features 5888 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR6 memory. This VRAM pool runs at 7000MHz on a 256-bit bus, providing a total memory bandwidth of 448 GB/s. While this is enough for most games at 4K today, how long that will remain the case is an open question. If you’re gaming at 1440p, however, 8GB of GDDR6 should be sufficient well into the future.

MSI RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio – Performance

Test system: Z390 Asus ROG Maximus XI Extreme Motherboard, Intel Core i9-9900K CPU (stock), Corsair H115i PRO RGB 280mm AIO CPU Cooler, 32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4-3200, 1TB Samsung EVO Plus NVMe SSD, Corsair HX1200 1200-watt power supply.

Like all of our graphics card reviews, the MSI RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio was put through a battery of synthetic tests and real world gaming benchmarks. I tested games at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K at Ultra settings, with RTX on and DLSS enabled at the “Quality” preset wherever possible.

It’s important to note that several of the cards I had available for testing were from third parties with varying factory overclocks. As generations progress, the amount of gamers with third-party cards over Founders Editions becomes more prevalent, but bear in mind that these cards will run several percent faster than their reference counterparts.

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MSI RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio – Synthetic Benchmarks

In synthetic tests, the Gaming X Trio performed admirably, beating the Founders Edition in all but the Boundary benchmark where there was less than a 1 FPS difference. What’s even more noteworthy is that it outperformed the RTX 2080 Ti (a factory overclocked variant, no less) in three out of four tests. The one test where it didn’t, the results were extremely close.

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MSI RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio – Gaming Benchmarks

Looking at the relative performance in games, the MSI RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio performs very, very close to the Nvidia RTX 3070 Founders Edition. This isn’t surprising, as GPU Boost effectively clocked both cards to within 100 MHz of each other, narrowing the performance gap significantly. Broadly speaking, both cards remained within 2-3 frames of each other.

Let’s take a look at 4K performance.

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With the power on tap with this GPU, examining 4K performance makes sense. At their highest settings, with RTX and DLSS enabled (where possible), we see a mix of 60+ FPS results and those that could easily be pushed there with some simple graphics adjustments. For a $569 card, these are solid results and provide a strong entry-point to 4K gaming that won’t break the bank.

At the same time, the difference between the Gaming X Trio and Founders Editions is absolutely marginal. The deciding factors, then, come down to thermal performance, acoustics, and style. While style is entirely subjective, the improved thermal performance of the card is inarguably a major selling point that can also provide extra headroom for custom overclocks.

MSI RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio – Purchasing Guide

The MSI RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio retails for $569 and it’s available at Newegg.

Demon’s Souls, the latest remake from Shadow of the Colossus (PS4) developer Bluepoint Games, is hitting the PS5 launch day, and with it reviving the start of the modern Soulsborne genre. But in bringing the PS3 classic to life after so many games in the genre, both developed by original devs FromSoftware and others, Bluepoint had an interesting task ahead of it: maintaining what many loved while making it feel fresh and modern. And that’s on top of optimizing it to showcase what the PS5’s SSD, DualSense controller, and more can add to the experience.

IGN spoke with creative director Gavin Moore about the project, and came away with new info on the game’s visuals, haptics integration, and much more. Here are some of our biggest takeaways, which you can hear alongside seeing new footage in the video above.

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PS5 Cinematic and Performance Modes

As a launch game for PS5, Demon’s Souls is aiming to showcase the technical prowess of the PS5, and to allow players some choice of how they want to play, Bluepoint is offering to visual modes for players to pick: Cinematic and Performance modes.

Cinematic mode runs at native 4K at 30 FPS, and as Moore described it “It means we can up the resolution of every single tiny pebble in the game, right? The tessellation is incredible and it’s all real-time, and it all casts real-time shadows. It’s so immersive.

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Additionally, Demon’s Souls will offer Performance mode, which runs at 60 FPS – “That’s a crisp 60, so it doesn’t drop,” Moore explained – with dynamic 4K resolution.

“You’ll be able to react faster to those attacks and roll and dodge out of the way and feel like you’re a little bit more powerful if you’ve been having a hard time on the 30,” he said.

Demon’s Souls’ Use of PS5’s SSD, 3D Audio

And, of course., in addition to its visual performance, Bluepoint is hoping to bring Demon’s Souls’ world to life via the 3D Tempest audio built into the PS5.

“We literally added thousands upon thousands of new sounds into this game, obviously paying close attention to what the original has done,” he said of just how intricate the audio detail work for the game is.”

But he also noted how the 3D audio can actually change the way you play, alerting you to more precisely the location enemies or projectiles may be coming from.

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“You can feel the Imperial spies creep up behind you in the Palace of Boleteria. You can feel the creatures crawling out of the slime, he said. “I can hear the arrows go past my head.
“When you tread on a track in the Shrine of Storms and a dart will fire out of the wall at you…most unfairly, because you don’t know it’s coming because it’s just a sound. But now you can hear it. And it gives you that split second to react and roll for instance, or turn and guard.”

Bluepoint has also recorded a new version of the original’s classic score, with an ambitious live-recording plan.

“We’ve done a re-imagining of the original score by Shunsuke Kida’s and it’s absolutely stunning. We recorded the whole thing at Air Studios in London with a world-class orchestra, a full choir. We even recorded a world famous pipe organ at Temple Church in London,” he said, noting 120 musicians play on the new, reimagined score.

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However you choose to experience Demon’s Souls, Bluepoint is also aiming to make good use of PS5’s SSD in removing one of the greatest frustrations that can come with any Soulsborne – the time between death and getting back into the game.

“If you think about the superfast loading, the frustration of the original game is not [necessarily] the challenge or the dying. It’s the, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to wait two minutes before I can get back into the game and take revenge and get my souls back.’ And now, you’re straight back into the game, and that’s incredible,” he explained.

“[We’re] using the SSD to improve the loading, but also using the SSD to create environments which are absolutely stunning. There are limitations to what the PlayStation 3 could do both visually and audi- wise. We created environments now, for instance, which are so intricate and detailed, every room or corridor tells a story.”

World Tendency and Online Support

Getting a bit more into the detail of Demon’s Souls, Moore confirmed that World Tendency is back from the original game and is largely true to the experience players had on PS3.

When you’re playing offline, you can swing the tendency toward black or white, the former offering more difficult enemies and greater loot, while the latter has enemies that are easier but don’t offer as great rewards.

While playing online, the larger player base affects the state of the world, but Moore did explain that the team is hoping to make World Tendency a bit more evident so players know what they’re contending with.

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“I think the original game’s problem was that [World Tendency] wasn’t shown, right? You couldn’t really understand where the tendency was. What we have done is try to improve World Tendency through the UI. So, you should be able to understand which state the world your tendency is in for playing the game,” he said, which will hopefully make the experience more understandable for newcomers.
And on the subject of the game’s online servers, the original Demon’s Souls’ lasted for a famously long time before shutting down. While Moore explained there’s no specific timeline in mind, the plan is to support the game so long as the players are there.

“We plan on, as long as there are people who are willing to keep playing Demon Souls and love the game, then the service will remain.”

Modern Improvements

Demon’s Souls is also in the unique position of being a remake to the start of a genre that has been iterated and improved upon since the original’s debut. Bluepoint had to balance both being reverential to the original experience but also making something that would be fun and rewarding to play by modern standards.

“This is the game that gave birth to this genre of gaming. And so we have to pay great respect to the original vision, ut at the same time, we have to make a lot of modern-day life improvements. But none of those were taken lightly,” Moore said. “When we decided to have a look at the camera, for instance…we changed the camera position slightly, and we made sure that it doesn’t run through the walls and get stuck on collision and all those sorts of things. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have an option in the game so you can turn on the old camera if you want to. You can do that. We preserve all of that. It all exists there for the user to switch on and off as they wish.

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The thing for us is you have to remember that the way you played the game 11 years ago is not the way you imagined the game. You imagine it completely different,” continued. “We had to basically create the game as the way that the players of the original PlayStation 3 version imagined it to be. And then, at the same time, make sure that we created a game the new generation of gamers could enjoy and love as well.”

Moore made it clear that team wants to do right by the original developers and fans with the remake while providing something fresh and exciting for anyone jumping into the PS5.

There’s plenty to look forward to for both new and returning players to the world of Demon’s Souls when it launches alongside the PS5 on Nov. 12, including a new photo mode, robust character customization, and much more.

But as you wait to play, be sure to check out our PS5 unboxing, our hands-on experience of PS5 pack-in Astro’s Playroom (not a Soulsborne), and the latest details on PS5 launch game Sackboy: A Big Adventure (does Sackboy have a soul?)

And be sure to check out the full PS5 launch lineup to know what you can expect to play on day one.

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Jonathon Dornbush is IGN’s Senior News Editor, host of Podcast Beyond!, and PlayStation lead. Talk to him on Twitter @jmdornbush.

Three-quarter scale arcade cabinet maker Arcade1up revealed the list of games coming to its digital pinball machines later this year. The three tables, Star Wars digital pinball, Marvel digital pinball, and Attack From Mars digital pinball, each come loaded with 10 different games.

Here are the games included with the 3 upcoming Arcade1up pinball machines:

Marvel Games Pinball Included Games:

• Spider-Man
• Civil War
• Wolverine
• X-Men
• Thor
• Marvel’s Women of Power- A-Force
• Ghost Rider
• Venom
• Fantastic Four
• Fear Itself

Star Wars Pinball Game List:

• Boba Fett
• A New Hope
• Ahch-To Island
• Battle of Mimban
• Darth Vadar
• Masters of the Force
• Star Wars: Rebels
• Han Solo
• The Force Awakens
• The Empire Strikes Back

Attack from Mars Pinball Game list:

• Attack from Mars
• Fish Tales
• The Getaway
• Junk Yard
• Medieval Madness
• White Water
• Red & Ted
• Funhouse
• Tales of the Arabian Nights
• No Good Gofers

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The Arcade1up pinball tables include a recessed 24″ screen and built-in accelerometers, so you can gently nudge the tables and the game reacts as you’d expect the physical tables to react. Check out the gallery below to see images of the tables.

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The new tables are a collaboration between TasteMakers, (the company behind the Arcade1up line) and Zen Studios, makers of the PinballFX franchise.

Arcade1up first revealed the digital pinball tables, along with new arcade cabinets, during the Summer of Gaming earlier this year.

All three tables should be widely available for preorder at GameStop and Walmart soon, with the Marvel machine already live at GameStop. You can sign up for alerts at the Arcade1up website. According to Arcade1up, the tables “are slated to arrive” around December 2020.

Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard has said it’s “hard to imagine” The Elder Scrolls 6 as a fully Xbox-exclusive game in a new interview that touches on many aspects of ZeniMax’s acquisition by Microsoft.

In the interview, GamesIndustry‘s James Batchelor posed the idea that seeing The Elder Scrolls 6 as exclusive was hard to imagine, particularly as The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim owes some of its huge success to the sheer number of consoles it launched on. Howard replied by saying, “I would agree that is hard to imagine,” but would say no more on the subject.

The subject of Bethesda’s games becoming Xbox exclusives has been a talking point since the moment we learned Xbox had agreed to acquire parent company ZeniMax for $7.5 billion. On Microsoft’s part, here are good cases for both sides, and Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has previously said any decisions about exclusivity would be made on a “case-by-case basis”.

Howard backed up that case-by-case approach in the new interview, although he says that the early stage of the acquisition (it won’t complete until 2021 at the earliest) means that, “We haven’t gone through all of that, to be honest.” This follows Phil Spencer’s comments earlier this week, where he explained that it would be illegal for him to be making decisions for Bethesda until the acquisition is complete, meaning planning hasn’t truly begun.

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Howard also makes clear that every Elder Scrolls game since Morrowind has partnered with Microsoft to some extent, so any exclusivity deals that do emerge aren’t a huge change in and of themselves: “I can’t really project where things will be except to say we’ve done those sort of exercises ourselves as an independent.

“If you look at every Elder Scrolls game, there has been some exclusivity on Xbox or with Microsoft. We’ve partnered with every game. Morrowind was basically a console exclusive, Oblivion was a long timed exclusive, Skyrim’s DLC was exclusive for a long period of time. We’ll decide what makes the best sense for our audience when the time comes, and I can’t really project today what that looks like.”

As we’ve heard previously, Howard confirms that Bethesda is “giving up very little” of its independence by joining Microsoft, and says, “We’re a subsidiary, but we’re still running our games and pushing everything the way that we have.” The implication is that, while Microsoft will naturally have some say on decisions around Bethesda games, Bethesda itself will also have a major part in that process.

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Speaking more generally, Howard explained that he hadn’t anticipated how huge a news story the acquisition would become, because he’d been “in the weeds” while organising it: “I grossly underestimated the impact in the larger gaming community,” he says. “I was naively surprised at how big it landed and what it meant in the larger context of games, but I was happy with the feedback we saw. A lot of people saw it as a big positive thing, the same way we do.”

It’s well worth reading GamesIndustry’s interview in full, which contains Howard’s thoughts on the benefits of Game Pass (and how it could help reignite certain genres of games), and the effect of streaming on the industry.

For more, you can read the five biggest takeaways from Xbox’s Bethesda acquisition, or check out our Xbox Series X guide. And, if you’re still trying to secure an Xbox Series X or S before next month’s launch, keep an eye on our Xbox preorder page for up-to-date retail links.

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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Black Friday is soon, but it’s not here just yet. However, we do have some Black Friday prices at hand, with these early Black Friday deals coming through the woodwork a whole month early. Best Buy is the culprit but we won’t berate them too much for it, these deals are actually reasonably decent. They certainly won’t be setting the world on fire, but there are still a few gems available in the early video game deals, such as $120 off a Nintendo Switch 400GB SD card, Borderlands 3 down to just $9.99 (alongside a free next-gen upgrade), or a refurbished Animal Crossing Nintendo Switch for $269.99.

As Black Friday deals on video games go live, we’ll continue to add the latest and greatest offers available to this article. Don’t forget, we’ve also rounded up all the best deals for Black Friday in our comprehensive post, including some early offers on 4K TVs, gaming laptops, external storage, and more.

Gaming Black Friday Deals That Are Live Now (Ends Sunday)

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Robert Anderson is a deals expert for IGN, he’s both excited and terrified at the prospect of Black Friday. Be nice and ask him how his day is going @robertliam21

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An article written by Square Enix Producer Naoki Yoshida has detailed the world and story of Final Fantasy XVI, and introduced us to heroes Clive, Joshua, and Jill.

You can read the post in full over on the PlayStation Blog, where you can check out some artwork from the game and learn more about the motivations of the trio of main characters, as well as the world they inhabit. You can also check out the official Final Fantasy XVI website, which reveals even more details about the game’s setting and cast, and the game’s tagline: “The legacy of the crystals has shaped our history for long enough.”

Final Fantasy XVI takes place in Valisthea, a land “studded with colossal mountains of glittering crystal called Mothercrystals.” The Mothercrystals have blessed the realms with aether for generations, allowing Valisthea’s people to live in comfort. Of course, wars have been fought over the ownership of the Mothercrystals, which has created a set of conflicting nations, known as the Grand Duchy of Rosaria, the Holy Empire of Sanbreque, the Kingdom of Waloed, the Dhalmekian Republic and the Iron Kingdom. A “ruinous Blight” has recently overcome the land, which is threatening to disturb the “fragile peace” achieved between the warring states.

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The game’s main protagonist is Clive Rosfield, the firstborn son of the Archduke of Rosaria. Rosfield is a knight known as the “First Shield of Rosaria” who is tasked with protecting his younger brother Joshua, described as “the Dominant of the Phoenix.”

A Dominant is a special person who is essentially a vessel for devastating creatures called Eikons, special Summons that “can level nations.” Depending on the nation, Dominants are treated as royalty or used as weapons of war. The blog notes that more Eikons will be revealed in the main game as players journey through Valisthea.

It was expected that Clive would become the Dominant of Rosaria, but destiny chose Joshua, who can transform into a Phoenix to protect his nation. Joshua has bestowed Clive with “the Blessing of the Phoenix,” which allows the protagonist to “wield a part of the Eikon’s fire.” Joshua also “quails at the sight of a carrot on his dinner plate,” and laments the fact that he, the more frail Rosfield brother, received the Eikon’s power.

Then there’s Jill Warrick, a confidant of the brothers who is an expatriate from the Northern Territories and ward of the Duchy of Rosaria in order to sow peace between the two factions. She’s a member of the Rosfield household and a close childhood friend of the brothers.

Final Fantasy XVI was announced for PS5 back in September of this year, and has already completed “basic development”, with the next big reveal event relating to the game coming in 2021. It’s still a matter of conjecture as to whether the game will come to PC, after its announcement for the platform was scrubbed. You can watch the game’s first trailer here.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.