The Xbox Series X fridge, the meme that keeps on giving, has found its way into Dirt 5 as part of the Power Your Memes Pack. The pack is available exclusively as a Game Pass Ultimate perk for Dirt 5 on Xbox and the Windows 10 version on PC. The pack contains the infamous Xbox Series X fridge as an item that can be placed in Dirt 5’s Playgrounds, its custom arena creator. Players who download the pack can also play on maps with the fridge that other players have created.
Based on the images posted by developer Codemasters, the in-game model of the fridge is opened slightly, with a variety of colorful drinks visible. The pack also includes three car skins to use in-game: one for the BMW M2 Competition, Sodicars Racing BV6, and Jimco Unlimited Class 1. It’s unclear why exactly the Xbox Series X fridge is being added to the game, but it will probably lead to some interesting player-created maps.
The Xbox Series X fridge first came around after Microsoft officially announced that the console is, in fact, not the size of a refrigerator in response to memes about the two items having a similar shape. Microsoft took the meme one step further by creating actual, full-sized refrigerators modeled after the Xbox Series X. Later, Microsoft created mini versions of the refrigerator, as part of a marketing deal with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and eventually promised to manufacture some for sale after beating Skittles in a Twitter battle.
Codemasters was recently acquired by EA after the company stepped in with a higher offer than Take-Two, which was also trying to acquire the racing game developer. Dirt 5 is available on Xbox One, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC. It is also currently available as part of Xbox Game Pass on PC and console.
Nvidia’s RTX 30-series graphics cards are among some of the more desirable products difficult to buy due to a number of reasons, including a global chip shortage. If you are looking to get your hands on an RTX 30-series GPU easily, you are probably going to have to wait until later this year.
During its Q1 2022 earnings call, Nvidia announced that shortages regarding the RTX 30-series are expected “to remain supply-constrained into the second half of the year.” Despite the short supply and high demand, Nvidia announced that it made $5.66 billion in revenue last quarter, with gaming revenue up by 106%.
Last year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang anticipated supply shortages to last until 2021. In January, Nvidia’s chief financial officer, Colette Kress, anticipated that supply for the RTX 30 series would “likely remain lean throughout Q1.”
The issue is likely to impact any future cards coming to the RTX 30-series, which Nvidia may announce at least one new card on May 31st.
[poilib element=”accentDivider”]
Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
Despite supply issues for its highly desirable RTX 30-series graphics cards, Nvidia made $5.66 billion in revenue during the first quarter of the 2022 fiscal year; the company announced in its earnings report today.
Of course, this is no surprise as the company anticipated another profitable quarter after it announced it made $5 billion in revenue in Q4 2021 despite the supply issues for the RTX 30-series graphics cards.
Since the release of the RTX 30-series last year, the company has not been able to meet the unprecedented demand. However, it is not the only company impacted by the short supply and high demand due to an ongoing chip shortage — numerous other highly desirable gadgets, including the AMD Radeon RX 6000-series of graphics cards, as well as the ninth-generation gaming consoles, the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S have felt the effects of the shortage.
To try and combat the shortage issues, Nvidia announced last week that newly manufactured RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti graphics cards will receive a reduced ETH hash rate to make these cards less useful to people that plan to use the GPUs to mine Ethereum cryptocurrency.
Nvidia may also be planning to unveil or possibly release a new RTX 30-series graphics card on May 31st. The company plans to hold an Executive Keynote as part of Computex 2021, an annual computer trade show held in Taiwan.
[poilib element=”accentDivider”]
Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
Riot Games is making an MMORPG set in the League of Legends universe, and according to the game’s executive producer Greg Street, it’s not going to please everyone.
While technically announced, Riot’s MMO is in its incredibly early stages, with the announcement of the project largely serving as a way to attract more talent to the project. As such, almost any information shared about the game is new information, and Street seemed open to answering fan questions in an ongoing Twitter thread about the project. He started off the thread setting some expectations for players, namely, that there is no way the game will appeal to all players and that some many not like the game at all.
One thing I can say about “unannounced” MMORPG is that you won’t all love every feature in it. We’re going to make some choices that you may not agree with. Players want different things in their games. That’s fine. Some of you (shudder) may not love the game at all. Also fine.
Street goes on to state that the game will “almost certainly” have systems like stats, gear, and dungeons, though the team isn’t “ready to yet talk about how much it is or is not like other games out there.” Street himself says he’s a big fan of traditional style MMO dungeons and raids, saying he would specifically be “crushed” if the game didn’t deliver on an enjoyable raiding experience.
I don’t want to get into specific features yet especially not just over twitter like this.
But anyone that knows me from my WoW dev days would know that I love dungeons and raids as a player.
Further in the thread Street writes he will be looking to gather player feedback in the coming years on exactly how much time players want to invest in any particular game on a per day and per week basis, and that he thinks it’s “cruel for any game to try to be the only game you’ll ever play when there are so many great games out there.” When asked whether or not the game will be beginner friendly, Street replied that “it has to be” because there are plenty of players who have never played a MMO before.
We will definitely gather tons of feedback. Not in a “we don’t have a strong vision” sense, but in a “We want to validate our decisions with actual players” sense
The full thread is worth a read, as Street goes on to touch on subjects like the leveling experience in MMOs, the role of influencers and streamers, and whether or not players will be able to pet the dog.
Street is a veteran MMORPG designer who was for many years lead system designer on Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. He’s been at Riot for more than seven years and has worn many hats there, including lead gameplay designer on League of Legends and vice president of IP and Entertainment.
As for when players can expect to learn more about Riot’s MMO, Street writes the game won’t be shown in 2021 and that the team “won’t show much” for a long time.” However, Street goes on to write that the team will need to show the game early so that there is time to incorporate feedback “before it’s too late.”
League of Legend served as Riot’s sole game for years, but the developer now has a number of projects both ongoing and upcoming under its roof. Valorant, Riot’s hero-shooter, released last summer and is currently combating a toxicity problem, while a mobile version of League of Legends, called Wild Rift, launched in open beta earlier this year. Riot is also working on a fighting game codenamed Project L, a project that may still have a ways to go according to one developer.
A new Fortnite challenge this week will have players putting on their hiking boots. Among the Week 11 challenges is an Epic Quest to place a spirit crystal at the tallest mountain. If you’re wondering what a spirit crystal is or where to find the tallest mountain in Fortnite, don’t sweat it. This guide will show you what to do. Remember that the Fortnite Week 11 challenges are set to go live on Thursday, May 27 at 7 AM PT / 10 AM ET.
Tallest Mountain In Fortnite Location
First, what’s a spirit crystal you ask? Don’t worry, you’re not overlooking a new item. Like a lot of Fortnite challenges, a spirit crystal isn’t something you can find around the map. Rather, it will appear as an interaction when the challenges are live and you’re in the right place. That means you won’t find one to use anywhere but atop the summit of the tallest mountain in the game, which leads to the next question: what’s the tallest mountain in Fortnite?
The tallest mountain in Fortnite is Mount Kay in the southeastern quadrant of the map.
If you’ve completed past challenges related to scaling the tallest mountain, you’ll remember the peak of the Chapter 2 map is Mount Kay, just off from Catty Corner. You’ll want to head there to find the contextual button to place a spirit crystal, but with either one or no chests spawning atop that mountain, it may be best to do it in Team Rumble when your team’s Battle Bus charts a path nearby, meaning the other team will be landing far away and can’t sabotage your attempt. You can see the peak on the map marking below.
Once the challenge is live, you’ll want to find the prompt to place a spirit crystal and you’ll be all set. While this isn’t a Foreshadowing Quest, it may still relate to the aliens on their way for Fortnite Season 7. Perhaps the spirit crystal is some sort of offering to keep you safe from the alien mothership on its way, or if you’re a true believer, maybe it’s a way to get picked up. Time will tell, but in the meantime, catch up on the game’s complicated ARG surrounding the phrase “They’re Coming.”
Zack Snyder says he’s turning a failed Star Wars pitch into a sci-fi, samurai movie of its own.
Better late than never, Snyder clarified his plans on a recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast as reported by Slash Film. Snyder said he pitched Lucasfilm on a movie set after Return of the Jedi about a new cast of Jedi warriors on a mission, but was turned down.
Lucasfilm may have said no to the project, but Snyder is still developing the movie as its own IP.
“Yeah, [Lucasfilm] talked about it, but it never…I’ve been working on it, just away from the Star Wars universe, just on my own as a sci-fi thing,” Snyder said on the podcast. “It’s still a sci-fi thing, it’s the same story, it’s just kind of – let Star Wars be Star Wars. And the 11-year-old me still wants to make that. Now I just know how to, so maybe we’ll see that someday.”
Snyder says he pitched the project after the Star Wars prequel trilogy wrapped up in 2005 but before the Disney buyout in 2012.
“My idea was just: give me the keys and I’ll take her for a spin…it was that sort of middle Star Wars time after they had done the prequels and before the sale,” Snyder said. “I was just like, ‘You know what? I can fix that.'”
The news didn’t reach the press until early 2013. At the time, representatives for Snyder denied the report by saying, “While he is super flattered because he is a huge fan, Zack is not involved in any way with the new Star Wars.”
Snyder went on to work with Warner Bros. for years to craft a DC Comics movie universe. Snyder is no longer involved with DC movies and is now over at Netflix working on a franchise based on his new movie Army of the Dead. IGN rounded up a list of all of the times Snyder was rejected at Warner Bros. One of those Warner Bros. rejections was Army of the Dead.
Sony AI, a division of Sony focused on developing and working with artificial intelligence, is working with Sony Interactive Entertainment to make video game AI smarter. Sony AI was established in April 2020 and has quietly been working on advancements within the field. In Sony’s latest corporate strategy meeting presentation, there was a page dedicated to a “Collaboration in Game AI” between the two divisions of the company.
The presentation was given by Sony President and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida who said “Sony AI, which we established last year, has begun a collaboration with PlayStation that will make game experiences even richer and more enjoyable. By leveraging reinforcement learning, we are developing Game AI Agents that can be a player’s in-game opponent or collaboration partner.”
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
The quote itself doesn’t provide much in the way of details, except that Sony is looking to improve on current video game AI. Sony did recently file a patent application for an AI profile that learns from the way a person plays, eventually gaining enough knowledge to take over for the player and make similar decisions. Using AI that has learned from players in a multiplayer setting could make for more-competitive NPCs in video games. The patent states the AI could give players the ability to let the AI takeover if they were unable to complete a section in a game or they could let it take over for them in a co-op game if they needed to step away.
It’s hard to say what exactly will come out of this collaboration between Sony AI and SIE or if they will ever publicly say when technology is produced from this collaboration. Sony’s strategy meeting revealed a few other tidbits of information, including the fact that Sony has 10 movie and television projects based on its PlayStation IP in the works. Sony also mentioned its continued dedication to expanding its PlayStation IP into mobile titles.
Stonefly is the next game from developer Flight School Studio and publisher MWM Interactive, seeing a young inventor set out into the world to recover her father’s lost mech. Everyone in this world is incredibly small in size, so they pilot mechs to protect themselves from the much larger insects. It looks like such an intriguing story, one that’s partially told via the game’s music.
Ahead of Stonefly’s release I sat down for two interviews–one over video chat and the other via email–with creative director Adam Volker, game designer Mel Ramsden, and game designer and programmer Bohdon Sayre. I asked them about Stonefly’s music and how it ties into the game’s storytelling, as well as the making of protagonist Annika Stonefly.
“I honestly think the music might be the best part of the whole experience,” Volker told me. “I’m so excited for people to hear this game. Characters don’t have themes. We decided to build the music around the places Annika visited and the emotional beats of the plot of the story. You hear more about Annika in the music than any of the characters but it’s more about what she’s feeling–when she’s in Woodruff, it’s homey, it’s familiar, it’s warm. When she’s in the Marshes, she is the furthest from home she’s ever been, so the music is darker, it’s scarier, it’s ambient. The musical journey is mostly from Ann’s point of view.”
Stonefly doesn’t feature voice acting so the designers turned to the music, artistic style, and gameplay to augment the written dialogue. The theme of wind, for example, plays a part in both gameplay and the narrative.
“Many parts of the story are about letting go of the past and the change from heaviness to lightness, which emotionally lines up with the themes of wind,” Sayre wrote. “Being stuck and slow is in direct contrast to freely flowing wind, and we use that in gameplay as well, where one of the main status effects you run into is being covered in goo and unable to fly away. This matches well with Annika being unable to escape the situation she doesn’t want to be in, and needing to find a path through it to some emotional clarity she didn’t know she was looking for. She does this quite literally by going with the flow of wind and being open to where it takes her.”
“[Voice acting] definitely is a potent force for communicating character, but at the end of the day if comic books can tell dramatic stories with just text, then we can too,” Volker added.
While talking to the devs, I mentioned how one of my favorite shots of Stonefly is of Annika sitting down, arms crossed, head on her hands. She’s just staring in contemplative silence, and the lighting casts the shot in a soft glow of blues and purples. Though much of Stonefly’s gameplay is about pushing bugs off tree branches, Volker said that shots like these capture the focus of Stonefly’s story, which is an internal conflict. This is a story about a young girl learning what her place in the world is and figuring out where her moral compass ultimately lies.
Seeing this screenshot is what made me want to play through Stonefly–how does Annika get to this point and how does she move beyond it?
“We tried to provide a lot of context for how Annika might be feeling to show off her mental and emotional state,” Volker said. “The scenes in her tent are when she is alone with her thoughts. We used the dreams there to give her an internal monologue that helps players understand where she is at. We hoped it gave a picture of a rounder character. Someone who is able to act one way during their day but has a lot going on in their heart and head.”
Ramsden added that the story won’t just take place in Annika’s head. There’s a bit of a loop-like structure to Stonefly. Early on in the story, Annika stumbles onto a traveling troupe of mech pilots called the Acorn Corps. She joins them, returning to their camp in between outings to rest and upgrade her mech. When she returns, conversations can spark between her and the members of the troupe.
“There’s an element of the traditional linear story sense here where you do go out and when you come back you’ll get a little extra story–you’ll have completed the mission so something will happen,” Ramsden told me. “But there’s also the addition of the Patrols, which are a little bit more player-driven in terms of pace because they’re nonlinear, a little bit more sandbox-like. So when you go out on a Patrol with a goal in mind, you can complete that goal as quickly or as slowly as you want.”
When she returns to camp, Annika can talk to the members of the Acorn Corp and upgrade her mech.
Because of these optional Patrols, Stonefly’s overall narrative is composed of nonlinear story beats and a linear story-driven campaign. The narrative is designed to shift to the player’s expectations. Everything ties back to Annika and her emotional and mental journey, but you can gain a bit more insight into the world at large around her by taking the time to explore off the beaten path.
“I hope those moments feel like it’s your call,” Ramsden said. “If you want to proceed through the story right away, you can absolutely go forth and complete it as fast as you can but if you’d like to just spend more time in the world and maybe not progress outside of an area right away, then you totally can and there’s stuff that you can do and you can wander around and find it. And then, when you feel good and satisfied, you can cash in your quest or go find the item, and then go to the next new area and do the same thing. So it’s a bit of a hybrid in terms of the pace of the narrative–it’s linear but there are non-linear beats.”
I’m looking forward to Stonefly–I’m a huge fan of Flight School Studio’s Creature in the Well and this game looks similar in regards to the care put forth in telling a story through music, gameplay design, and artistic style. Stonefly is scheduled to launch for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Switch, and PC (Steam and Epic Games Store) on June 1.
One of the main factors currently limiting the adoption of USB-C ports across more devices is its relatively low power limit at just 100W. Today it was announced that this will soon change, with the new USB-C standard supporting up to 240W, which is enough to power 4K monitors and gaming laptops.
As reported by GameSpot sister site CNET, the new standard was revealed by the USB Implementers Forum, the organization that promotes use of USB technology and manages its specifications. The decision to increase the power capacity means that manufacturers will now be able to produce 240W USB-C cords, although the specification mandates that “Extended Power Range” cords be visually distinct from “Standard Power Range” (100W) cords.
This could be a big deal in PC gaming, as it will likely mean an increase in combined data-and-power ports across devices that require up to 240W. This could come in the form of more gaming laptops moving to an Apple MacBook model, where there are a handful of USB-C ports that all can charge, transfer data, and connect to peripherals.
USB-C ports are, of course, already widespread in gaming in applications where 100W is plenty of power. The Nintendo Switch, for instance, charges on a USB-C cord, as does the PS5’s DualSense and the Xbox Series X controller.
USB-IF expects products supporting the new standard to hit the market in the latter half of this year. However, it may take manufacturers more time to fully incorporate the tech into their devices.
