Many Nintendo Switch fans have experienced the sad phenomenon of Joy-Con drift, where the analog stick in the console’s controller starts to veer in one direction, making it difficult or impossible to control games. There’s currently a class action lawsuit against Nintendo in the US over the issue, and now the company is being sued again–this time, by a kid and his mom.
Wired is reporting that a North California complaint, filed by one Luz Sanchez and her son, centers on Joy-Con drift. Sanchez bought her then 8-year-old son a Nintendo Switch in December 2018, and he experienced issues with the Joy-Con controllers within a month of purchase. New controllers were bought within a year, as the problem progressed until the Joy-Cons were essentially inoperable; seven months later, the second set of controllers started to experience the same issue.
Sanchez has filed the lawsuit alongside her son, who is listed as a minor in all documentation. The plantiffs are seeking over $5 million in damages from this lawsuit. In their suite, Sanchez’s lawyers have argued that Nintendo “has had a financial motive to conceal the defect, as it did not want to stop selling the Products, and/or would need to expend a significant amount of money to cure the defect.”
In July 2019, Nintendo started offering free repairs for Joy-Cons with drift issues, even when they were outside of warranty. However, COVID-19 led to Nintendo service centers temporarily shutting, which has complicated matters (especially with Joy-Cons being difficult to find in stores as game and console sales have skyrocketed).
This year, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa apologized for the issue, noting an ongoing lawsuit. “We are continuing to aim to improve our products, but as the Joy-Con is the subject of a class-action lawsuit in the United States and this is still a pending issue, we would it like to refrain from responding about any specific actions,” he said.
If you’re looking for a Joy-Con alternative for your Switch in handheld mode, consider the Hori Split Pad Pro.
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The free trial period will open up all of Overwatch’s game modes and heroes to active NSO subscribers, giving players the chance to experience the full version of Overwatch without having the buy the game. It will run from October 13-20, and players can download the free trial right now from the eShop.
Overwatch will take up a minimum of 12 GB of storage space on the Nintendo Switch. For players who participate in the free trial but don’t own the game, any progress made will carry over should they buy the Legendary Edition of Overwatch. Players will just need to ensure they are playing on the same NSO account. Overwatch: Legendary Edition costs $40 and contains five Legendary hero skins, five Epic hero skins, and five Origin hero skins, as well as a three-month NSO membership redemption code.
In other Overwatch news, Blizzard Entertainment is still working on Overwatch 2. The last time the company talked about the sequel was when the 32nd hero Echo launched earlier this year. The company said Echo was the last character until Overwatch 2 drops, though a release date for the sequel remains unknown. BlizzCon returns in February 2021, so it’s likely Blizzard will discuss Overwatch 2 then. In either case, Overwatch 2 multiplayer content will carry over to Overwatch.
Daniel Craig has offered up some frank advice to the next actor who chooses to take on the iconic role of James Bond in the blockbuster film franchise.
Speaking on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, the actor, who is officially bowing out as 007 after his fifth outing in No Time To Die, had an important piece of advice to pass onto whoever suits up in the tuxedo next. “Don’t f**k it up,” Craig said in his short, but to the point, recommendation. “It’s a beautiful, amazing thing. Leave it better than when you found it.”
Craig also addressed his decision to move on from the franchise, as he said that he had already given everything that he could to the character, who he’s portrayed on-screen since 2006’s Casino Royale. He reprised the role in 2008’s Quantum of Solace, 2012’s Skyfall and 2015’s Spectre, all of which have collectively grossed more than $3.1 billion at the worldwide box office.
“I’ve given it everything I can,” he said. “I’m so glad that I came back and did this last one. We had lots of loose threads we hadn’t tied up. The story just didn’t feel complete… I needed a break, I truly admit it. I just needed to get my head away from it for a while and once I had, we started talking about storylines and things that we could do, and where we could take it.”
On his next assignment, Bond’s peaceful retirement from active service will be interrupted when his CIA friend Felix Leiter tracks him down in Jamaica, seeking help to rescue a kidnapped scientist. The mission will set Bond onto the “trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.” It has already been speculated that Rami Malek’s supervillain is a rebooted version of Dr. No.
Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait a little while longer to find out, as the release date for the 25th Bond film has been pushed back for the second time due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. No Time To Die will now be released in April 2021, a year after it was originally set to hit the big screen, in order for it to be watched by a worldwide theatrical audience.
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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
The Dishonored & Prey The Arkane Collection rating mentions four games, which are most likely Dishonored, Dishonored 2, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider and Prey. The Wolfenstein Alt History Collection blurb also mentions four games, which are most likely Wolfenstein: The New Order, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and Wolfenstein: Youngblood. Given that the Xbox Series hasn’t announced any VR support just yet, it’s reasonable to assume Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot has been skipped.
The Wolfenstein collection mentions in-game purchases, but don’t be alarmed, it’s almost certainly referring to the existing microtransactions in the co-op game Wolfenstein: Youngblood, which allow players to purchase cosmetic skins.
These next-gen collections would make a lot of sense in the wake of Microsoft’s recent $7.5 Billion acquisition of Zenimax Media, bringing Bethesda Softworks and its studios under its wing – previously, Microsoft said Bethesda Games would be released on non-Microsoft platforms on a “case-by-case” basis. Here are the 5 biggest takeaways from Xbox’s Bethesda acquisition.
Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO, Jim Ryan, has said that he believes more PlayStation 5 consoles will be sold in its first fiscal year than the amount of PS4s sold in the same period.
Talking to Korean site Naver (via Gamesindustry.biz), Ryan predicted that PS5 will “sell more in its first fiscal year than [we] sold in the first fiscal year at the time of [the] PS4 launch.”
For reference, between its launch in November 2013 and the end of the fiscal year in April 2014, the PS4 sold more than seven million units. That means that Sony is forecasting more than seven million PS5 sales before next April, despite the current pandemic economy.
Previously there had been rumours that the pandemic had disrupted supply to the point that only four million consoles would be able to be produced this fiscal year, but with Sony seemingly confident about selling over seven million, it appears that rumour holds no water. Another report had suggested that the high price point of the console would affect demand, but Sony appears to not be worried about that.
In other PS5 news, this will be the first time the console uses X as the default button for select worldwide, meaning Japanese players will be forced away from the classic Circle-to-select mapping. A recent hands-on with press in Japan also revealed more images of the monolithic console in the wild.
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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.
Activision has confirmed that five modes will be available to play in the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Open Beta.
Those modes are Team Deathmatch, Domination, VIP Escort, Kill Confirmed, and Combined Arms. This is a similar mix to the modes seen in last month’s alpha, just with VIP Escort replacing Domination. Combined Arms, the mixed vehicular/infantry 12v12 mode, will likely be Domination though, should it use the same set up as the alpha.
This beta is open to all PS4 players between Saturday, October 10 and Monday, October 12. Players who have pre-ordered on PS4 can get in a little earlier, though. If that’s you, then the gates open on Thursday, October 8.
If you’ve pre-ordered on a different format, then you’ll be able to get into the beta from Thursday, October 15. This opens up to all players, regardless of format, between Saturday, October 17 and Monday, October 19. The beta is crossplay enabled, so by this second weekend of the beta Xbox, PlayStation, and PC users can all play together.
Black Ops Cold War releases on November 13, on current and next-gen consoles as well as PC. Check out our Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War preorder guide to see what comes with each of the editions. As for what’s in the actual game, expect campaign, multiplayer, and the popular zombies mode, which was recently revealed.
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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.
I’m one of those people. You know, someone who thinks that weapon durability in The Legend Of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was a good idea–I won’t be offended if you close your browser window right now. But the stress of having your best sword break in the middle of an important fight and having to frantically improvise is one of the things that makes BotW (and other games that employ similar mechanics) so great. The cool stuff that can happen when you’re on the back foot and forced to get crafty with the limitations placed on you by a well-designed system is an experience that makes video games feel special. Watch Dogs: Legion has elements of this, but only if you choose to engage with them. You should. Because after several hours playing Legion, I found that the game is at its best when it makes you contend with your character’s weaknesses.
If you’ve heard just one thing about Watch Dogs: Legion so far, it’s probably got something to do with playing as an elderly woman who is amusingly good at shooting people and performing lethal takedowns. In fact, you can play as anyone in the game, recruiting random NPCs off the street to be your protagonists. Everyone you pick up will come with their own set of unique skills that will surely help contribute to the efforts of resistance collective DedSec–punching harder, hacking faster, getting access to unique vehicles and weapons. But, in the case of certain people like the elderly, some of these traits can be detrimental–they can’t sprint or take cover, which means it’s going to be hard closing the distance to perform those amusing takedowns or escape certain death when you inevitably fail trying.
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20 Minutes of Surprisingly Serious Gameplay – Watch Dogs: Legion
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In his hands-on time with this second preview, fellow GameSpot editor Michael Higham discovered that the story is a lot more intense than we thought it was going to be (see the above video to get the gist of what we mean). But on my part, I spent a lot more time diving into the play-as-anyone mechanic, trying to see how much variety was out there. And upon discovering numerous characters with negative traits, and initially wondering why they existed at all, I fell into a rabbit hole trying to put together the most flawed team possible to see how it changed the game.
Here’s the thing: Whoever you recruit in Legion–whether it be a punk hacker, a professional hitman, a nurse, or a livestreamer–they are also going to have the same basic skill set. They’ll be able to hack, be stealthy, use guns, drive vehicles, and fist-fight like most other characters. Each individual might have unique abilities that give them a bit of an advantage in a particular department, which enhances a certain playstyle you might have an affinity for, but that doesn’t stop you from doing the same thing with another character. For example, I love stealth and hand-to-hand combat, but even though being a gymnast might make my footsteps quieter, and being an MMA fighter might give my attacks more damage, I can still sneak and punch my way through Legion’s army of fascist antagonists just as well as a supermarket clerk or a pharmacist (seriously, don’t mess with essential workers).
The only exception to this, of course, is grandma. Elderly characters who have the “Low Mobility” trait can’t sprint, take cover, or dodge in hand-to-hand combat, which makes melee combat and stealth a significantly less viable option for those characters. No cover means that close- and mid-range gunfights are more dangerous too. Suppose you happen to recruit an elderly protagonist just for laughs. In that case, you’ll genuinely have to conform to a completely different way of playing the game if you want to use those characters at all–long-range gunplay and a focus on remote hacking techniques are probably your best bet.
I think this rules, and it makes the moment-to-moment of Legion a lot more engaging. There’s a tension that comes from knowing that you have to use your character in an optimal mode of operation as much as possible because you run the risk of getting yourself into a situation that you have no way of escaping–whether it be by accident or by a disastrous chain of events. For example, my grandma character accidentally ran down a citizen and got into an intense car chase, which ended in a crash and a Heat-style gunfight that she wasn’t able to easily sprint and parkour away from like the all-rounder characters might be able to do. It’s these kinds of moments that make the game memorable, the kinds of tales you want to tell other players.
As a concession, most of the characters I’ve seen with bad traits have a complementary positive trait that enhances what they can do well. One of my other low mobility characters could instantly summon a ridiculously-high-performance sports car to get around or make a quick getaway. Elsewhere in my ragtag group of misfits: A gastroenterologist with medical perks who farted constantly, forcing me to ‘go loud’ in every encounter; a glass cannon assassin who both dealt and received more damage; an interpreter who had exceptionally long cooldowns for hacking techniques but packed an excellent assault rifle for some reason.
When your characters’ health falls to zero, they’ll become incapacitated and unusable for a set period. However, among my recruits were a couple of all-star characters with great perk loadouts, both of whom came with a catch. One of them had a negative trait that said he might die permanently when killed. Another had a trait that said she would die spontaneously–as in, at random.
If you’re familiar with the work of Watch Dogs: Legions’ creative director, Clint Hocking, you might be unsurprised to hear about these ruinous twists to the game. After all, the last title he shipped was Far Cry 2 (all the way back in 2008!), which featured weapon degradation, gun jamming, and your character getting spontaneous and debilitating bouts of malaria. They were highly divisive mechanics to be sure, and the Far Cry series has played it a lot safer ever since. But Far Cry 2 still has a vocal cult following because of this fascinating (and in my eyes, excellent) approach.
Watch Dogs: Legion presents these X factors as an option–playing this dangerously isn’t for everyone, and you can easily avoid characters with negative traits altogether when recruiting people for your DedSec crew. But I’m really glad to see that Legion has these elements woven into its core mechanics and more than a hint of Far Cry 2 DNA in its blood. Having the risk of your best character dying can make for very tense and exciting games–ask anyone who plays XCOM on Ironman mode. And being forced to completely change your playstyle to work with the limitations of your character does a lot to make Legion’s infinite number of potential protagonists actually feel tangibly different. These compromised heroes make the population of Legion’s London a lot more interesting, at least in the first few hours. Hopefully that’s something that will continue throughout the whole experience, because god knows I’m a sucker for punishment.
Watch Dogs: Legion releases on October 29 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. It will also be available November 10 for Xbox Series X/S, and November 12 for PlayStation 5. The game features free next-gen upgrades.
Ubisoft has revealed its post-launch plans for the upcoming Watch Dogs: Legion ahead of its October 29 release date, and the first wave of content implements its online components as a free update. This will include cooperative modes and missions, as well as a PvP mode that will go live on December 3.
Online Multiplayer And Co-Op Missions Coming December 3
Players will be able to drop into futuristic London with up to four-player co-op and can roam the sandbox city or take on co-op-specific missions (with at least one other player) and dynamic events that happen in the open world. For those seeking a more challenging experience, the update will include Tactical ops, which seems to be more in-depth mode with missions that require four players and feature objectives that need to be completed in a more intricate fashion.
Legion’s live producer Lathieeshe Thillainathan mentioned that while the overall online mode will be easy to jump into, Tactical Ops was an opportunity to increase the challenge in some capacity. “There are exciting moments, specific cinematics, new level architecture you’ll see in this game mode that you won’t see anywhere else in the game. But we’ve been balancing it very much to keep it challenging, but not at an extreme level,” he said regarding the Tactical Ops mode.
Lastly, the PvP mode coming with this first update is called Spiderbot Arena, in which up to eight players control spiderbots strapped with guns in a deathmatch mode. Other PvP modes will come in the further updates, too.
Invasion Mode And More Content Is Coming Later
More online-specific content is planned for the future, including the return of the series’ Invasion mode. This is the mode where you can drop into another player’s instance to hunt them down and take their data. Thillainathan also mentioned how it has been tweaked for the new game’s mechanics. “Invasion [got] a lot of reimagining because we wanted to incorporate play-as-anyone… Not only will you be able to use your team, but you can also instantly swap between anybody that you see in the open world to hide in plain sight,” he said.
Future free updates will include new character types and single-player campaign missions as well as a new game plus mode, although details on this content is not yet available.
Cross-Gen, Cross-Save, And Cross-Progression
Thillainathan confirmed that progress made in Legion’s online modes will be cross-gen and cross-platform, saying, “The online sandbox cross-progression is universal on any platform you play. Regardless if you’re on PlayStation or PC, it’ll go wherever you’re playing.” However, cross-progression for single-player content is tied to the same family of platforms–for example between PS4 and PS5, Xbox One and Series X/S, and PC and Stadia, but not between each other.
Bloodline: The First Paid DLC Pack And An Assassin’s Creed Crossover
The first paid DLC (as part of a season pass) was also revealed alongside the details about the free updates. The DLC is called Bloodline and stars the original Watch Dogs protagonist Aiden Pearce who teams up with the Watch Dogs 2 character Wrench, both who are playable. Bloodline will cover what they’ve been up to since the previous games’ stories and how they got involved with London’s branch of DedSec for Legion’s story. This DLC also features new progression tracks and abilities.
Two other new characters will be included in Bloodline, but won’t be the focus of the story. You have Nina, who was the subject of horrible transhuman experiments, but has the ability to mind-control others. Then there’s Darcy, who is a member of the Assassins brotherhood that’s said to be a non-canonical crossover character, but will be a nod to Assassin’s Creed in her capabilities and backstory.
In asking Thillainathan more about how they make the Watch Dogs and Assassin’s Creed world’s collide, he said, “We’re not saying they’re in the same canon or building something massive that way. It’s just to really have fun and build a character that is heavily inspired by Assasssin’s Creed.” He mentioned that the team is dipping into the Assassin’s Creed universe in other ways but had no further details to share.
More On Watch Dogs: Legion
So, to summarize the Watch Dogs: Legion roadmap, you can expect the following:
Ahead of its release for Xbox One, PS4, Google Stadia, and PC on October 29, we had the chance to play a preview build of Watch Dogs: Legion. The upcoming open-world game is just the first of three massive Ubisoft games scheduled to release later this year–Legion will be followed by Assassin’s Creed Valhalla in November and Immortals Fenyx Rising in December.
The video above is Michael Higham’s three-hour play session trimmed down to 20 minutes of action. After going into the preview expecting to see more of the tongue-in-cheek humor and rambunctious hacking hijinks that have dominated most of the marketing material for Legion, Michael was a little surprised to find a rather serious story. As you can see in the gameplay, Legion will occasionally dip into more morbid and horrifying material, like human trafficking or broken artificial intelligence.
Legion, the third game in the Watch Dogs franchise, takes the series to London, although it’s one that has been overtaken by a paramilitary organization. The game will feature music by British rapper Stormzy and the original Watch Dogs’ protagonist, Aiden Pearce, is scheduled to be featured in Legion in a post-launch DLC expansion.
If you’re looking forward to playing Watch Dogs: Legion on Xbox Series X/S or PlayStation 5, don’t worry about having to pay for the game a second time. If you buy Legion for Xbox One or PS4, you can upgrade to the Series X/S or PS5 versions of the game for free when both next-gen consoles launch in November.
When you get a shiny new video card, there are a lot of fun things you can do with it: boot up an old favorite to see how it shreds the system requirements, or install a new game just to see the glory of max settings. But if you’re a software engineer like Twitter user Strife, you can do something truly wild, like installing a famously-demanding game like Crysis 3 entirely onto the card’s VRAM.
I installed Crysis 3 on my graphics card! I used some VRAMdrive software called GPU Ram Drive, made a 15GB NTFS partition on the GPU, then installed Crysis 3 on it At 4K very high settings get good fps and the game loads very fast – GPU-Z reports total VRAM use 20434MB pic.twitter.com/lLcQsD5JYM
— Strife, la fillette révolutionnaire (@Strife212) October 4, 2020
This is possible due to the 24 GB VRAM of the Nvidia RTX 3090, which is the company’s latest and greatest flagship card. (By comparison, the RTX 3080 only has 10 GB of VRAM, though a 20 GB version is rumored to be in the works.) According to Strife’s tweet, they used unofficial software to create a 15 GB partition on the GPU and installed Crysis 3 on it. Though the game runs well, Crysis 3 appears to be frame-limited without a workaround, capping out at 75 FPS.
Strife also noted that the game’s load times were about the same as an NVME drive, speculating that the game would have to be re-coded to take advantage of the setup. “Was hoping it would be faster but there is probably some weird bottleneck like this instead of doing it the ‘proper’ storage API way,” Strife wrote on Reddit.
If you’re hoping to snag a RTX 3090 to perform this bizarre digital alchemy yourself, you might have to wait a bit. As every PC enthusiast under the sun knows at this point, Nvidia’s 30-series is experiencing shortages due to the combination of high demand and COVID-19, and the situation is expected to continue until at least 2021. Nvidia has apologized multiple times for this state of affairs.
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