World of Warcraft: Shadowlands has been rated for Xbox Series X in Brazil.
As spotted by Gematsu, the Brazilian ratings board has classified the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion Shadowlands for both PC and Xbox Series X. This would suggest that the game could come to Microsoft’s next-gen console in the future.
If that rating is accurate, this would be the first time World of Warcraft would be playable on a console. Since its launch in 2004, the game has only ever been available on PC and Mac. IGN has reached out to Blizzard for comment about the listing.
The Medium, the next game from Layers of Fear and Blair Witch studio Bloober Team, was shown off in new detail during last week’s Xbox Series X showcase. Skipping the current Xbox generation entirely, The Medium will make use of the next-generation increase in power to render two worlds simultaneously, a feature that Bloober refers to as “Dual-reality” gameplay. On Xbox Series X, The Medium will run at 4K and 30fps which the studio says will provide a more cinematic approach on console.
Curiously, the list below makes no mention of a solid-state drive, technology which Bloober said was essential for realising their game on the Xbox Series X. “For the immersion that is crucial in our games, it was the best feature and it was delivered by Microsoft,” lead game designer Wojciech Piejko said back in May after The Medium made its debut.
“And of course the raw house power is great. So we are now able to deliver our vision of The Medium for the first time just how we imagined it.” The Medium is currently scheduled for a Holiday 2020 release.
Can your PC run a game that bridges the divide between the world of the living and the dead? The minimum and recommended requirements for the game are now live on Steam so that you can see if your hardware is ready to cross over to the other side.
Got Joy-Con drift? It seems like every Switch owner has been vexed with the problem just as the pandemic caused Nintendo to shut down its US repair centers. If you’re in the market for a new set of Joy-Con, for drift-related reasons or not, you might have noticed these fancy Nintendo controllers have become hard to find in stock. Thankfully stock is coming back, so you can now get certain colors for the MSRP of $79.99 at various retailers.
Note that Joy-Con stock remains in flux, so if they’re sold out or back-ordered at one retailer, try the others.
It’s worth noting that if you’re experiencing drift, Nintendo will repair your Joy-Con for free. The repair centers are starting to open back up, so you can fill out a repair ticket at Nintendo’s customer support page. There’s a note at the top of the page hinting that it may take longer than usual, as “our repair centers are now able to gradually restart services.”
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Chris Reed is IGN’s shopping and commerce editor. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.
Playground Games’ Fable will balance the original series’ ideas with brand new ones, according to an Xbox executive.
Speaking to The Guardian, head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty explained that Playground is very much looking to Fable’s past, while thinking about what fresh mechanics it could add:
“With any kind of franchise like that, where you’ve had existing versions, there’s always that balance between what you’re going to bring forward, what still stands up, and what you want to add that’s new,” he said. “It’s like the challenge of making a new Star Wars movie – there’s stuff that everyone wants you to bring along, but then you’ve got a responsibility to that, to new places and I trust Playground has a good vision for that.”
As for why Playground was chosen to take on the project, Booty pointed to the studio’s past work on Forza Horizon’s open worlds, and its passion for Fable as a whole:
“I just look at what Playground has done with the Horizon series – that attention to detail, the ability to represent these naturalistic landscapes. They also have a real passion for the IP and a unique point of view on what’s core to Fable. Everything I’ve seen as the game progresses tells me this is going to be a very high-quality release.”
It may go some way toward assuaging fears that the new Fable will be an MMO rather than a single-player RPG, which became a widespread rumour after the announcement of the game (and a conspicuous lack of gameplay footage). While other anonymous sources have refuted those rumours, this is as close as we’ve heard to Microsoft explaining what the new Fable could be, other than a “new beginning” for the series.
Booty’s comments, at least to me, point more towards a version of Fable that takes in modern approaches to open world games, rather than one that wildly changes the series’ format. On a personal level, I’d be very interested to see the game draw on Playground’s own history in the genre – a single-player Fable where you can stumble across AI versions of your friends’ heroes fighting in the wider world, like some weird mix of Forza’s Drivatars and Dragon’s Dogma’s Pawns, would be pretty cool in my eyes.
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].
Hearthstone‘s new Scholomance Academy expansion is coming on August 6, with a theme that takes you to a magical school. In the lore, the Kirin Tor mage Kel’Thuzad is doing dark experiments in the basement. But some at Scholomance stood up to the mage, like the character behind GameSpot’s card reveal: Keymaster Alabaster.
Keymaster Alabaster – Neutral Legendary for Hearthstone: Scholomance Academy
Keymaster Alabaster is a late-game Neutral Legendary that can generate enormous amounts of value if your opponent can’t remove him. Simply giving you a copy of your opponent’s draws is already a big advantage by feeding you information about their hand, but it goes one step further by making your version of the card potentially cheaper. Simply playing Alabaster and passing to your opponent’s turn will get you at least one cheap card from their deck, and if they can’t remove it, you can make it two. If they have to dig for a solution to remove him, he’ll just keep generating value.
The Neutral designation means Alabaster could appear in any deck, but he’ll be especially potent in late-game Control decks that look to out-value your opponent, and ones that benefit from low-cost cards. That includes Rogue, which is always looking for more low-cost cards to act as triggers for its Combo effects. Drawing 1-cost spells can be especially effective for Priests and Mages, and synergizes well with the new Spellburst keyword.
Spellburst is one of the new mechanics in Scholomance Academy. It triggers a Battlecry-like effect upon the first use of a spell, so you can determine when is best to activate it. Scholomance will also introduce new Dual-Class Cards, and “Studies” spells that let you discover a card while reducing the future cost of its type.
Scholomance Academy is now available for pre-order as two bundles. A Pre-Purchase bundle ($50) gets you 55 packs, one random Golden Legendary, and a Kel’Thuzad card back. The Mega bundle ($80) gives you 80 packs, five Scholomance Golden packs, a random Gold Legendary, Kel’Thuzad Mage Hero and card back, and a Tavern Pass with four Arena tickets.
A Western release for Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers has been confirmed, but no release date’s been set.
The news arrives thanks to Persona Central, who translated the information in Koei Tecmo’s first-quarter financial statement, revealing that the game has a planned release region of Europe and America.
This is the first time a Western release for the game has been acknowledged, following its Japanese launch on February 20th, 2020. The Phantom Strikers was revealed back in April of 2019, and it is a hack and slash Musou crossover, bringing Dynasty Warriors-style gameplay to the Persona franchise for the first time.
According to the financial report, the planned platforms for the game are PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. What all of this means is that we can expect a full official announcement of ATLUS’s plans for Persona 5 Scramble’s western release in the near future. While there is no approximate release date to speak of, those of you hoping for a Western release can rest assured knowing it’s on the way.
The Witcher is Netflix‘s hugely popular fantasy show, based on the classic novel series. The upcoming second season will resume shooting next month following a five-month shut-down, and it’s now been announced that a spin-off series is in development.
The new show will be titled The Witcher: Blood Origin, and is a described by the streaming giant as a “six part, live-action limited series.” The Witcher: Blood Origin will be a prequel to the main series, set 1,200 years earlier. It will explore the origin of the very first monster-hunting Witcher and will chart the events that led to the “conjunction of the spheres,” where the world of monsters, men, and elves merged.
The showrunner for The Witcher: Blood Origin will be musician and writer Declan de Barra, who wrote The Witcher Season 1’s fourth episode, as well as contributing songs to the show’s soundtrack. He has also written for series such as Iron Fist and the The Vampire Diaries spin-off The Originals.
In a statement, de Barra said, “A question has been burning in my mind ever since I first read The Witcher books–what was the Elven world really like before the cataclysmic arrival of the humans? I’ve always been fascinated by the rise and fall of civilizations, how science, discovery, and culture flourish right before that fall. The Witcher: Blood Origin will tell the tale of the Elven civilization before its fall, and most importantly reveal the forgotten history of the very first Witcher.”
In addition, Witcher showrunner Lauren Hissrich will be executive producer, while Andrzej Sapkowski, who wrote the original novels, will act a creative consultant. The show does not have a production start or premiere date yet, but Netflix has stated that it will shoot in the UK.
The Witcher Season 2, which also films in the UK, is set to resume production on August 17. Hissrich previously stated that it would appear sometime in 2021, and has also suggested that the story will be easier to follow than that of Season 1, which was spread over different timelines.
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A new tweet from the Netflix NX account states that the series will look at a period 1,200 years before The Witcher’s protagonist Geralt of Rivia walked the lands of the Northern Kingdoms. This prequel series will focus on how the first Witcher was created.
The six-part live-action show will be developed by the original series’ showrunner, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, and Declan de Barra, who wrote the season 1 episode ‘Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials’.
No release date has been offered, but with the second series having had to delay filming until August because of COVID-19, it may potentially be some distance away.
Halo Infinite is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious and graphically impressive games in the series. And if you want an insider look at the characters, worlds and technology of the game, Dark Horse Comics has you covered with The Art of Halo Infinite.
IGN can exclusively debut the cover to The Art of Halo Infinite, created by the game’s art director Sparth. Check it out below:
Art by Sparth. (Image Credit: Dark Horse Comics)
Here’s Dark Horse’s official description for The Art of Halo Infinite:
The legendary super soldier returns in Halo Infinite. 343 Industries and Microsoft are building the biggest and most visually spectacular Halo yet. Halo Infinite debuts on the Xbox family of consoles, including Xbox Series X, Microsoft’s latest and most powerful game console. To take full advantage of its prodigious graphical prowess, 343 Industries built an all-new, next-generation game engine, giving their world-class artists the tools and technology to realize the worlds, war, and wonder of the Halo universe in unprecedented style and fidelity. 343 Industries have given Dark Horse access to the art and artists who’ve brought Halo Infinite to vibrant, vivid life. It’s all here in unparalleled detail, the heroes you’ve grown to love–the Master Chief, the brave soldiers of the UNSC, as well as the weapons, vehicles, villains and vistas–and of course, the eponymous and magnificent environments of Halo itself.
The Art of Halo Infinite is priced at $39.99 and is currently scheduled for release on December 29, 2020. You can pre-order the book on Amazon.
IGN’s Brian Altano and Max Scoville recently unboxed another art book from Dark Horse during Comic-Con@Home. Check out the video below to see what you get with the deluxe edition of The World of Cyberpunk 2077:
CrossCode recently released on Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Xbox One, and Xbox players were able to pick the game up on Xbox Game Pass. As it turns out, this last option has been by far the most popular one for new players.
Talking to the video podcast Duel Screens, CrossCode designer and programmer Felix Klein explained that the game has surprised them with its performance on Xbox Game Pass. He says that when the PC version was available on Game Pass for Windows 10, not many people played it–but now that it’s on console, that has changed.
“We’re actually pretty surprised at how many people play that way,” Klein says, just past the 43 minute mark in the video below. Asked if he can elaborate, he says that it’s comfortably outpacing the other systems. “Right at this moment, there’s more people playing on Game Pass than Switch and PS4 combined. That’s something I did not see coming.”
While this might not be too surprising on the surface, it’s worth noting that the install base on the Xbox One is much lower than the combined figures for the PS4 and Switch. Concrete Xbox One sales figures aren’t available, but the data suggests that it’s well below the PS4’s 110 million, and the lifetime sales of the Nintendo Switch (55 million) are likely higher, too.
Recently, No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games reported that the game had gained 1 million new players since coming to Game Pass. While you might think that it’s better to get a paying customer, there’s some evidence to suggest that Game Pass leads to higher sales–the developer of Descenders attributes Game Pass with higher sales figures.
