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Amazon AU has a great deal going on if you dig on Lombaxes and DualSenses. Details of that await you below, as do a raft of other AAA titles that are low on price and big on escapism. That’s just what you need to wile away the hours of a lockdown.
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Game Pass has a lot of games, and twice a month there’s more coming, and some leaving. It can be a lot to keep track of, not to mention figuring out what to play from its massive library. That’s why we created the Game Pass Show.
Join Persia to learn what’s new, what’s leaving, and what you should consider playing. This week, Game Pass sees the arrival of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, The Ascent, Blinx: The Time Sweeper, and more. Persia also takes the time to elaborate on what she’s been playing: No Man’s Sky. Also, make sure to stick to the end for the pick of the week.
Arc System Works has just revealed the first DLC character for the season pass of Guilty Gear Strive, and it’s another strange one that will undoubtedly confuse folks who haven’t played this game before. In the latest reveal trailer, we get to see the fighting debut of Goldlewis Dickinson, who is the Secretary of Absolute Defense for Guilty Gear’s take on the United States of America. He marks the first post-launch fighter to be added to the game’s roster for season pass holders, and he’ll make his debut on July 27.
For the uninitiated, Goldlewis Dickison is a new character that made appearances in the story campaign of Guilty Gear Strive, though some fans believe he made an early appearance in the background of the Neo New York stage in Guilty Gear Xrd. Regardless, he will now be a playable fighter in Strive, and his weird moveset and bizarre backstory certainly makes him in good company alongside the likes of Faust and Ramlethal. What makes Goldlewis so unusual is that not only does he have access to a mini-gun and a cybernetic eye that can summon orbital lasers, but he also carries around a large coffin, which is holding a mysterious alien coming from Area 51.
We get to see Goldlewis and his mysterious partner in action during the trailer, and he certainly looks to be an oddball character–which are usually the most fun to play as in Guilty Gear games. Seeing his heavy swings of the coffin makes Goldlewis appear to be another heavy fighter like Potemkin, but he’s also got some weird tricks that he can pull out on short notice. Along with his firearms, Goldlewis also has a partner stashed inside a container. This blue, spectral alien can assist Goldlewis with launcher attacks and other cross-ups, but it can also summon strange extraterrestrial objects into the fight, such as a spiked drone that will move close to the opponent for additional damage.
Season pass holders will be able to play as Goldlewis early on July 27. If you don’t have the season pass, then you can purchase him individually on July 30, three days after his debut. So far, Goldlewis Dickinson is the only announced character for the Season 1 pass, which includes access to a total of five characters, two new stages, additional color palettes, and a bonus story mode. However, according to the video, the next fighter will be released sometime in August, with other additions coming later into 2021 and into early 2022.
Guilty Gear Strive has only been out for a month, and it’s quickly become a popular entry in the series, selling over 500,000 copies worldwide. In our full review, we gave the game an 8/10 and stated: “Like all Guilty Gears, [Strive] is a game of extremes. If you’ve tried the series and fallen off because of its complexities, I wouldn’t expect a different outcome. If you’re up for a challenge, or just want a cool, sharp-looking fighting game to mess around with, Strive knows all the right moves.”
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Netflix’s subscriber base is growing, but not in North America — in fact, its subscriber base in North America dropped by almost half a million in the second quarter of 2021, which the streaming giant blames on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
This news comes by way of The Hollywood Reporter, which reports that Netflix topped its expectations for the second quarter after raising its subscriber count by 1.5 million. This brings its total subscriber base to 209 million.
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However, despite that growth, which was largely shouldered by a net of more than one million new subscribers in the Asian-Pacific region, the company saw its North American subscriber base drop by 400,000. In terms of revenue, the company delivered $7.3 billion in the second quarter, up from the $7.16 billion in the first quarter.
In the most respects, the news is positive for Netflix. Lower marketing and content spending resulted in margins that have never been higher, with average revenue per user in the U.S. and Canada sitting at $14.54 in the second quarter —higher than any other streaming service on the market, according to Netflix. That average revenue per user number sits below $10 in the Latin America and Asia-Pacific markets, though.
As for why North America’s subscriber base has dropped, and why the company has struggled in 2021 versus previous years in its history, Netflix says COVID-19 is to blame.
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“It really boils down to COVID, frankly,” Netflix CFO Spencer Neumann said on a company earnings call. “For us, at a minimum, it creates some short-term choppiness in the business trends.”
Netflix is expecting “3.5 million net subscriber adds in the 3rd quarter of 2021.” This represents a shift in subscriber count expectations from the company that has aimed higher in year’s past. This modest expectation of 3.5 million likely stems from the company’s first quarter, which saw it add just 4 million subscribers despite forecasting 6 million. Netflix reportedly added 15.8 million subscribers in the same quarter in 2020.
“We had those 10 years that were smooth as silk, and we are just a little bit wobbly right now,” Netflix Co-CEO Reed Hastings said on the call.
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Despite that wobbliness, Netflix is “betting that a return to more normalized film and TV production and an increased cadence of originals later this year will help it return to growth,” according to THR.
Perhaps Netflix’s venture into video games will help fuel new growth for the company, which just hired ex-EA and Facebook executive Mike Verdu to lead its game development. Netflix revealed today that it will focus on mobile games first in this new venture, saying that it won’t charge an additional fee for games in doing so.
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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.
With word from Battlefield 2042 developer DICE that cloud computing will soon level up the capabilities of first-person shooters, we discuss what we’d like to see and what we think we’ll see. Plus: what we hope the studio formerly known as DICE LA will be up to next, Dark Souls 3’s new FPS Boost on Xbox Series, and more!
Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our new YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 download of this week’s episode. For more awesome content, check out the latest episode of IGN Unfiltered, featuring an interview with The Elder Scrolls Online boss Matt Firor about his RPG roots, the future of the popular MMORPG, and what else the studio is working on as part of the Xbox Studios family:
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Oh, and you can be featured on Unlocked by tweeting us a video Loot Box question! Tweet your question and tag Ryan at @DMC_Ryan!
For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review.
Valve announced its ambitious new portable PC platform, the Steam Deck, last week, with three distinct models with varying technical specifications to choose from. One facet of all three that was standard, however, was the amount of RAM each one will ship with, which now seems a lot better than initially suspected.
In the original technical specifications, Valve noted that the 16GB of LPDDR5 memory was running in dual-channel, with an expected bandwidth of 5,500 MT/s. The latter figure is still correct, but Valve has updated the official product page to reflect that the memory is, in fact, quad-channel, not dual, offering up a lot more bandwidth to the APU powering the device.
This confirms what some had already suspected when first presented with the technical specifications, given that the expected bandwidth relative to the APU powering the Steam Deck didn’t seem to add up.
A discussion and curiosity is resolved now.
Van Gogh, which is used by Valve’s Steam Deck, has 4 UMCs.
I expected 4x 16-Bit (a memory channel under LPDDR5 is actually 16-Bit wide).
The official spec claimed 5.5 Gbps (dual-channel), which didn’t made sense to me.
It got corrected pic.twitter.com/orgzMKJldE— Locuza (@Locuza_) July 19, 2021
What this means is that the APU will have much more memory bandwidth to utilize, which is very important given its architecture. An APU is a combination of a CPU and GPU on the same silicon, which means that both share the same memory pool. This is different to traditional desktop PCs and laptops, where the CPU has exclusive access to your system’s RAM (usually dual-channel DDR4 memory) while your GPU has its own memory which is generally much faster and contains a much wider bandwidth (most GPUs ship with GDDR6 or GDDR6X memory today).
In the case of the Steam Deck, having more memory bandwidth means better shared allocation between the GPU and CPU, which means better performance when playing games. Not that anything has changed since Valve opened preorders for the Steam Deck, but at least now you can rest assured that you’re getting what is pretty standard for this type of setup.
Overwatch‘s Summer Games event is now live across all platforms, bringing back the limited-time Lucioball and Lucioball Remix matches as well as a wide array of new cosmetics, some of which were teased ahead of time. The event will run through August 10.
Throughout the three-week event, you can play nine games per week (for a total of 27) to unlock weekly rewards. Winning a game will count double as two games. Any games played in Quick Play, Arcade, or Competitive will count towards those goals. The rewards for those milestones will be sets of new Epic skins:
Of course, the Summer Games event will also introduce several new Legendary skins that are obtainable through regular loot boxes or in the shop. You can see each of those in the screens below.
Gallery
This will be the first time since the Summer Games annual event started that it coincides with the actual Summer Olympics. The Summer Games began as a riff on the Olympics, with the multi-national Overwatch characters sporting outfits to honor their home countries. Since then it’s become more about general summer fun and goofs, which is how we get Bob with a flamingo on his head and Mei flinging ice cream scoops.
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The startup iiRcade has been picking up steam in recent months with its at-home arcade cabinets, with special editions on the way for games like Mutant Football League and Space Ace. If you’re interested in picking one up, now’s the perfect time, as all cabinets are $100 off and come with free shipping.
Running through Labor Day, the sale includes all cabinets–which means both the standard blue-and-orange design as well as special editions based on specific games–and the free shipping goes to $100, so if your region would have a higher fee than that, you may still see some charge.

Current iiRcade cabinets that are eligible for the discount (with discounted prices) include:
Unlike competitors such as Arcade1Up (which are seeing increased prices recently on certain systems) the iiRcade uses an online store to supplement its 11 included games. Big-name licensed games on the store include R-Type and its sequel, Shadow Dancer, Space Harrier, Dead Cells, Windjammers, and ToeJam And Earl: Back in the Groove. With the Black Edition, you can also apply a Double Dragon skin or use your own, like I did to turn my cabinet into a Strikers 1945 model. For more on the system, check out our iiRcade review.
RimWorld, the space-colony sim from Tynan Sylvester and Ludeon Studios, received both a major update and a new expansion today. The expansion, titled Ideology, has been in development for the last 15 months and will give players extra control over the story of their colony, while the update changes nearly every facet of the game.
Ideology, which according to a post on Steam partially written by Tynan took 15 months to develop, is meant for the players that created themed colonies. “For many years I’ve seen players create colonies with their own special themes — minimalist nomads, raiding pirates, mad cannibals, drug-worshippers,” wrote Tynan. “People want to have a sense of authorship over their stories.”
To that end, the Ideology expansion will let players create a belief system that members of their colony follow. Players can create a colony of “tree-worshipping cannibals who carve skulls into every piece of furniture, or blind tunnelers who shun the light,” just to list two examples given by Tynan.
Additionally, players can expect a boatload of extra content to come with the expansion. Ideology adds new quests, creatures, and a new ending. Of course, Ideology is also completely moddable.
Along with Ideology, today marks the arrival of the 1.3 update for RimWorld, a massive patch that changes nearly every aspect of the game.
Starting with animals, players can now expect them to stop being lazy layabouts and instead pick up some slack. They’ll be more productive following the update, but some will now need to be kept in pens and led around by farmers, who will also clear out the new egg boxes for chickens.
Raids are also getting a rework, becoming a slightly larger threat. Enemies will now execute a “breach raid” to get past your defenses, making some of RimWorld’s infamous heat traps for raids obsolete. Tribal enemies will hack through walls with axes, pirates will use grenades, and mechanoids will use a new device called a “termite.” To make fighting easier for players, colonists can also carry around medicine and use it on the battlefield.
You can find a full list of everything coming in RimWorld’s 1.3 update down below.
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