Halo Infinite beta players have found a creative way to compete prior to the game’s official launch, and it doesn’t even involve shooting each others’ characters in the face. While the beta is limited to Arena Slayer and a training mode called The Academy, experienced Spartans have started racking up Academy scores to compare online.
Academy is meant to be an advanced tutorial, helping onboard newcomers and teach veterans some of the more nuanced techniques that it takes to be a top-tier Halo player. But the Academy challenges also issue scores based on performance, including multipliers for things like double or triple kills. So naturally it didn’t take long for players to start to gamify the tutorials.
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343’s David Ellis, who works on the Academy, has been sharing some notable scores on Twitter under the hashtag WeaponDrillHighScore. Ellis requested people share their own scores with the hashtag, and subsequently asked that players participating share their platform and input device.
The resulting threads are full of Halo players showing off their scores, like one player who cracked 60,000 in a Sniper challenge, or above 20,000 for the Heatwave or BR75.
Help me out here folks. I want to see everyone sharing their top scores in #HaloInfinite Weapon Drills this weekend. Post pics/videos of your score with the hashtag #WeaponDrillHighScore and if you’re on PC or console.
It’s essentially a DIY score challenge, albeit without leaderboards. Maybe after the interest shown in the beta that feature will be coming. It did catch the attention of at least one member of the Academy team, after all.
Nintendo reportedly pulled out of being a part of this year’s Olympics opening ceremony “right before” the event.
The opening ceremony took place last week, and included 19 pieces of video game music from the likes of Nier, Monster Hunter, and Final Fantasy. However, according to a report from Shukan Bunshun (translated by IGN Japan), documents showing earlier plans for the event included five unused tracks, all of which came from Nintendo franchises, including Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Pokemon.
Backing up the idea that five Nintendo tracks were removed from the ceremony is the fact that five of the franchises included in the final opening ceremony track listing – Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Chrono Trigger, Monster Hunter, and Tales Of – saw two tracks played each. That could have been a back-up for losing the five pieces of music close to the event.
As for why Nintendo pulled out of the event, Shukan Bunshun says that Mikiko Mizuno (most famous for being a choreographer for the likes of Babymetal) provided the show’s original plans. During this time, Shigeru Miyamoto reportedly travelled to Tokyo “almost every week” for meetings. However, Hiroshi Sasaki (who subsequently resigned after making controversial comments about a Japanese comedian and model) was eventually given the creative director job and seemingly changed many of the plans, reportedly leading to Nintendo cutting its part in the event shortly before it took place.
Some of Sasaki’s own plans do appear to include Nintendo, including one section that suggested Lady Gaga could wear a red hat, before travelling down a Mario warp pipe. Shukan Bunshun suggests this may have been speculative from Sasaki, rather than a firm idea for the event.
Nintendo’s part in the event isn’t the only element that was seemingly lost along the way – the report also claims that Mikiko’s original ideas included an opening section that involved Akira’s red motorbike travelling around the anime classic’s Neo Tokyo setting.
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].
ViacomCBS and Comcast’s potential partnership, involving a joint venture of the two companies streaming services, has been put on hold amid mounting regulatory scrutiny.
According to sources cited by Forbes, both companies slowed down their discussions about a partnership due to growing concerns about “the Biden Administration’s pledge to aggressively enforce the nation’s antitrust laws.” However, it’s also suggested that talks may resume, depending on the outcome of the proposed WarnerMedia-Discovery merger.
ViacomCBS and Comcast are said to be awaiting the administration’s verdict on the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery to monitor how regulators react to the proposal before moving forward with their own partnership plans. A source tells Forbes that both parties held at least one “high-level” talk in June about the possibility of merging Paramount+ and Peacock.
Over recent years, the streaming market has grown increasingly saturated with new additions such as Disney+, Apple TV+, and HBO Max joining the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video to offer consumers alternative ways to watch a wider range of content, but when Paramount+ and Peacock joined the fold, they struggled to match the success of their competitors.
At the very least, the companies will likely consider bundling the two subscriptions to improve their reach, though other strategic possibilities will no doubt be explored if the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger survives regulatory review, considering that Biden signed an executive order on July 9 vowing “to combat the excessive concentration of industry.”
The WarnerMedia-Discovery merger was announced in May, with the companies joining forces in a $43 billion deal to combine WarnerMedia’s entertainment assets with Discovery to create a “premier, standalone global entertainment company” hosting “WarnerMedia’s storied content library of popular and valuable IP with Discovery’s global footprint.”
Panic Inc.’s crank-featuring 1-bit handheld, Playdate sold all 20,000 units committed for 2021 release – and it took just 20 minutes.
As reported by TechCrunch, Panic said that its shipping estimator accurately confirmed that 20,000 units of the handheld had sold in just under 20 minutes when they went up for pre-order on July 29. Orders after that point are still being accepted, but these are unlikely to reach customers until 2022.
Playdate’s pre-order sales launch wasn’t without some technical issues. Panic acknowledged on Twitter that its online store was experiencing some difficulties at the time – especially in relation to international orders. Some international users experienced problems when trying to select their country for delivery, whilst other issues with stock tracking meant that for a brief period of time the handheld showed as sold out.
Following its technical issues, Panic said that it was trying to “figure out the best plan for international orders that got delayed due to failures” but that the company was “amazed at the response” by fans over this first wave of Playdate orders. Panic also said in another tweet that there was potential for a “2023 bucket” of orders to make its way to customers in the future, thought the company did reassure fans that it should take a while to get there.
⚠️ There was a slight issue with our stock tracking and Playdate may have temporarily shown as “Sold Out” — we’ve fixed that now! Anyone should be able to place an order — but you may need to put Playdate back in your cart.
For those of you who haven’t followed the full Playdate story so far, the nifty little device utilizes a rotating crank which can be used to control different elements of its prebuilt games. IGN previewed the mini-handheld back in June before delving into a more hands-on experience earlier this month. For more from Panic, check out our Firewatch review where we ranked the Santo Campo developed game “among the best of the ‘walking simulators’ thanks to stellar writing, art direction, and voice acting.”
Following the release of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, Capcom is asking players to give their opinions on the series – and specifically asking if they want brand new games in the series.
The aptly titled The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles User Survey, which Capcom added to its website, asks players to give their detailed opinions on virtually every part of the game you can imagine. Capcom would like to know if you had high expectations for the game before purchase, where you purchased your copy from, what progress you’ve made with the game so far, and, most cricually, whether or not you’d buy a future Ace Attorney game if it were to be made.
Following this, players can also give their opinions on a list of further topics linked to The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles including voice acting, story, sound effects, background artwork, game controls, and more. Capcom has even prepared for the possibility that you might not have bought their latest title when filling out the survey. Opting to tell them that you don’t own The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles and have no plans on purchasing it in the future grants you access to a range of follow-up questions. These questions prompt you to tell Capcom what consoles/platforms you currently own to play games, which genre of games you prefer, and how many titles you have bought in the past year.
It’s safe to say this is one of the more thorough user surveys we’ve seen in a while. If you do manage to get to the end of the mammoth survey, then Capcom will reward you with an “original digital wallpaper” to say thanks for completing it.
A recent Animal Crossing: New Horizons datamine suggests that The Roost Cafe (and hopefully Brewster), one of the community’s most-requested features, could still arrive in the game during a future update. Needless to say, the fans are very excited.
Originally reported by Animal Crossing World, the version 1.11 patch for Animal Crossing: New Horizons contains some tweaks to lines of code that could suggest the addition of the cafe sooner rather than later.
According to the article, dataminers found code relating to a camera parameter change referenced as ‘IdrMuseumCafe’ back in version 1.10. However, additional lines of code have now seemingly been spotted reading ‘IdrMuseumEnt03’. Whilst not confirmed, this sounds like it likely relates to a third entrance to the Museum, which you could hope would lead into The Roost.
Elsewhere in the article, reports suggest that dataminers found the code reference ‘cNpcMemory:TalkProgressMuseumBuiltCafe’. Whilst it is again unclear as to exactly what this line of code means, it does contain the phrases NPC and MuseumBuiltCafe which are enough to give usome hope that we’ll be able to build a cafe into our museum.
The Roost cafe manager, Brewster, first made his appearance in Animal Crossing Wild World and has been a fan favourite within the Animal Crossing community ever since. While Animal Crossing: New Leaf made The Roost its own building, it’s usually been found attached to Blathers’ museum.
Rumblings of Brewster’s speculative return were not missed by fans across social media. The Animal Crossing Reddit page accurately summed up excitement levels right now with this simple but effective post:
The data additions come hot on the heels of Nintendo telling fans that it won’t stop updating the game anytime soon, which has led many to hope for some more meaningful changes to the game. Of course, as with all datamines, new code doesn’t necessarily mean new content – it could be putting ideas in place just in case Nintendo decides to add updates at a later date.
Over on Twitter, Brewster’s absence from Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been sorely noted. Whilst many fans are calling for the return of the Roost, one particular fan going by the username @iwantbrewster claims that they have taken to fully boycotting Animal Crossing: New Horizons until the barista is reunited with his adoring fans. Let’s hope it’s not too long before that boycott can be lifted.
it has been 355 days since i started boycotting acnh until brewster is added.
If you’re currently playing through Animal Crossing: New Horizons, why not check out our dedicated New Horizons wiki which contains a range of tips, tricks, and guides.
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Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
After addressing several technical issues, Valheim developer Iron Gate Studio has provided an update on the upcoming Hearth & Home expansion that will be available in Q3 2021. Originally delayed so that technical issues in the game could be fixed, the team explained that Hearth & Home content is still on track for a release in the current quarter.
“We’re still on track to deliver the update this very quarter, and as always, thank you for your kindness and patience,” the team wrote on Valheim‘s Steam store page. “Your response to our roadmap post in June was super supportive, and the questions that came through in the Reddit AMA gave us lots of inspiration for future updates.”
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Iron Gate provided a sneak peek at what the new content will look like with a small haul of loot kept securely hoarded away.
Valheim’s Hearth & Home contentNow with dragon security
The team also announced that it’s expanding next month, adding a new programmer, animator, and a QA Manager to its staff. After Hearth & Home arrives, Iron Gate Studio will move on to focus on the big Mistlands update and the production of smaller Valheim patches. Some of those fixes arrived last month, as a new update addressed a save bug issue that was erasing entire worlds and characters.
Valheim has been one of the biggest success stories of 2021 so far, as the popular Norse multiplayer game has sold 6.8 million copies as of March 31, an impressive feat considering that the game is currently only available on PC.
Marvel Studios has shared a new poster and a behind-the-scenes featurette for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
The brand new featurette really packs a punch, with action-packed clips from the upcoming movie spliced together with insights from producer Kevin Feige, stars Simu Liu and Awkwafina, and director Destin Daniel Cretton about Shang-Chi’s backstory and his connection to the Ten Rings organization. You can watch the two-minute video below:
“We’re going back to the very beginning of the MCU. We have a keystone event. And that event is Tony Stark becoming Iron Man,” Feige explains in the video, referencing Stark’s involvement with the Ten Rings organization. They were the ones who kidnapped Stark in 2008’s Iron Man and forced him to build advanced weapons of mass destruction for them.
Shang-Chi’s backstory will revolve around the discovery that his father is the mysterious and powerful Mandarin aka Wenwu, the leader of the Ten Rings. As explained in the featurette, Shang-Chi will be brought back into his father’s world and will have to deal with coming face to face with him again. Both are pictured in Marvel’s new poster for the movie, below:
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings stars Simu Liu as Shang-Chi, who must confront the past he thought he left behind when he is drawn into the Ten Rings organization. The film also stars Tony Leung as Wenwu, Awkwafina as Shang-Chi’s friend Katy, and Michelle Yeoh as Jiang Nan, as well as Fala Chen, Meng’er Zhang, Florian Munteanu, and Ronny Chieng.
I admittedly have a soft spot in my heart for gaming laptops with OLED displays. That feeling hasn’t changed after spending the last few weeks testing the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XD, which also happens to come with Intel’s latest 11th generation H-Series processor and an RTX 3070.
Gigabyte is marketing the Aero 15 as a powerful laptop for creatives, and while that’s a true statement, it’s also a fully capable and portable gaming laptop.
After using the Aero 15 XD, I can confidently say that it excels at both of those workflows, making it a solid option for someone who wants a work laptop during the day and a gaming laptop at night.
Specs
Here are the specifications of the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XD I’ve been testing:
Model: Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XD (RP75)
Display: 15.6-inch UHD (3840 x 2160)
Processor: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H (24M cache, 4.6GHz Max Turbo)
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU with 8GB GDDR6
Memory: 32GB DDR4 3200MHz
OS: Windows 10 Pro
Storage: 1TB PCIe 4 SSD
Webcam: 720p
Ports: 3 x USB 3.2 Gen 1, 1 x Thunderbolt 4 USB-C, 1 x HDMI 2.0, 1 x miniDisplayPort 1.4, 1 x 3.5mm audio jack, 1 x UHS-II SD Card Reader, 1 x Ethernet
My favorite aspect of the Aero 15 is the display. Not only because it’s a 4K OLED panel, but because the bezels surrounding the display on three sides are impressively slim. Gigabyte puts the bezels on either vertical side and along the top of the screen at 3mm. At that size, there’s effectively no border around the display and it looks great.
The 15.6-inch 4K OLED panel looks stunning as well. Thanks to the increased sharpness, I was able to see some of the more subtle details on the guns in Warzone and grew to appreciate the colors and design of various maps in Knockout City.
Because the bezel along the top of the screen is too small for a webcam, Gigabyte moved it to the bottom deck of the laptop, just above the keyboard. If you weren’t looking for it, you might actually miss it. There’s also a sliding cover that blocks the camera when it’s not in use. And odds are you won’t use it very often. Not only does the positioning make for an awkward angle, but the quality is just not great overall. It’s very grainy.
The all-black housing is broken up by an Aero logo that lights up on the lid, with a carbon fiber-like pattern near the bottom, closer to the hinges. The design doesn’t provide any sort of benefit, other than it breaks up an otherwise bland exterior.
The keyboard includes a number pad, a design choice I have mixed feelings about. Normally I don’t mind a full keyboard and num pad combo. But normally there’s some space on the left edge of the laptop to rest my palm, especially when gaming. But with the Aero 15, when positioned on the WASD keys, the edge of my left palm lacked a comfortable spot to rest on the laptop.
Between the thin display bezels and the number pad, there’s just no need for a larger housing. However, if Gigabyte were to remove the number pad and center the keyboard on the deck instead, I wouldn’t have felt like I was trying to balance my hand on a tightrope all the time.
Other than that, I liked this keyboard. The chiclet-style keys are individually backlit with RGB colors that you can set and control in Gigabyte’s Control Center app.
The touchpad is centered with the main keyboard, not including the number pad, and has a fingerprint reader in the top-left corner. The reader is fast and easy to use after setup. Open the Aero 15’s lid, touch the sensor, and a split second later the laptop is unlocked.
The power button is found just above the keyboard, centered with the housing and surrounded by a decorative pattern that enables airflow for cooling.
There are two downward-facing speakers on the Aero 15, each one found in the front corners on the bottom of the laptop.
You’ll find a respectable number of ports flanking either side of the laptop. On the right side are two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a Thunderbolt 4 port for high-speed data transfers (up to 40Gbps) or external monitors, and it will let you connect any USB-C device to the Aero 15. There’s also an SD Card reader, and then the charging port.
On the left side is an Ethernet jack, audio jack, USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, miniDisplayPort, and HDMI 2.1 port. I would like to have had a USB-C port on both sides of the laptop, just for ease of access, but the number of ports available on this machine should be more than enough to plug in your accessories and peripherals without having to buy a hub right away.
In total, the Aero 15 OLED XD measures 14 x 9.8 x 0.78-inches and weighs 4.4-pounds. To be honest, I’m surprised it weighs that much. It looks and feels very light when carrying it around the house.
All in all, the Aero 15 OLED XD’s design doesn’t break any molds or raise eyebrows, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XD – Performance and Gaming
Out of the box, the Aero 15 OLED’s GPU driver was set to the Studio driver, which makes sense because Gigabyte is advertising the Aero 15 as a device for creatives.
You can quickly switch to the Game Ready Driver with a few clicks in the GeForce Experience app, which is what I did after getting the Aero 15 setup and ready to test.
Inside the test unit I received is an Intel i7-11800H H-series processor, an RTX 3070 Laptop GPU (the new term for Max-Q tuned mobile GPUs), 32GB of DDR4 3200 Mhz memory, and a 1TB M.2 PCIe 4 SSD.
PCIe 4 and Thunderbolt 4 support come courtesy of Intel’s H-Series processor, and regardless if you’re a gamer or creative user, bring beneficial features to mobile devices, or in this case the Aero 15 OLED XD.
I’ve had an extended amount of time to test and use the Aero 15 OLED, and it’s fast. I’m able to multitask with multiple tabs in Edge, stream Spotify, manage Slack interactions and even mess around with basic photo or video editing and never once did I feel like the Aero 15 OLED was getting bogged down.
Benchmarks show a similar story.
When looking at these comparisons, it’s clear the Aero 15 OLED XD can mostly keep pace with the MSI GP66 Leopard and the Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC. It performed roughly 10-percent lower than the MSI GP66 Leopard on almost all tests and matched the Aorus 15G under the same tests.
As for gaming, outside of the issue of where to put my left hand while playing, I had a good time testing this laptop. I’ve been trying my hand at Knockout City after it was added to the Xbox Game Pass recently. I monitored the performance with every setting maxed out and playing at 4K resolution, and I was seeing on average 120 frames per second.
I monitored performance in Warzone as well, both with 4K turned on and turned off. With all graphics settings maxed out, the game gave me a warning about going over the “safe” VRAM level. The warning said I could experience dropped frames or tearing if I left all settings as they were. I played a couple of matches to see what would happen, and the warning was accurate. I did experience sporadic dropped frames and tearing throughout the matches. However, once I lowered graphics quality one level and was back under the VRAM limit, all of those issues went away.
The Aero 15 OLED XD averaged 51 frames per second when playing Warzone in 4K (I was not mad at the experience at all). When dropping down to 1080p and all settings returned back to high, I was not only under the VRAM limit, but performance saw a pretty big jump. Going from an average of 51 to 88 frames per second.
One downside to the glossy display panel is that I had to be really conscious of where I played. If I sat in the wrong spot in my office, the glare of the overhead lights was distracting and annoying. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it’s something to keep in mind.
One downside to the Aero 15 OLED XD is its battery life, at least when it comes to using it for work. I had high hopes for 4 or more hours of juice, but my dreams were quickly crushed after running PCMark 10’s battery benchmark. The Aero 15 lasted 2 hours and 16 minutes, or just enough to answer your emails, browse Reddit, and maybe order something on Amazon.
For a gaming laptop, that sort of battery life is expected. For example, the MSI GP66 Leopard powered through 2 hours and 20 minutes. Heck, even Gigabyte’s own Aorus 15G XC with similar specs lasted 4 hours and 41 minutes.
With the Aero 15 marketed as a laptop for creatives, it’s disappointing the battery didn’t at least match the Aorus 15G.
Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XD – Software
There isn’t a whole lot of extra software installed on the Aero 15 out of the box. Nvidia Broadcast is installed, which should help you sound crisp and look clear on video calls or when streaming.
Gigabyte has pre-installed its own Smart USB Backup app and the Gigabyte Control Center app is also present. The former app creates a bootable USB drive should you need to reset the laptop, while the latter is what you’ll use to adjust the RGB backlit keys, switch between different profiles for work and gaming, and control other system settings like charging policy, fans, or even update drivers.
That said, when using Control Center to update drivers, it kept installing an older version of the RTX 3070’s driver, so I eventually gave up on using it.
