Destiny 2‘s September 22 weekly reset came with a small hotfix, as well as another new addition: a tribute to Vicarious Visions developer Matt Helsom, who worked on Destiny 2 during the years it was being published by Activision. Helsom died in 2019, and a short new mission commemorates his contribution by writing him into Destiny lore as a Golden Age figure.
Fire up Destiny 2 starting today and you’ll see a screen that directs you to Mars to investigate a signal. You won’t see this mission in your quest log or receive any markers to track it, thanks to the fact that this isn’t your usual Destiny 2 excursion. To find the tribute, head to the Braytech Futurescape area of Mars and head north into the building, past Ana Bray, toward the Mindlab: Rasputin area.
The spot you’re looking for is right along the path toward Rasputin–you’ll know you’re in the right place when you crouch to get through a tunnel that takes you out of the building and onto a catwalk. As soon as you exit the tunnel, turn right to find a slightly opened door with a workstation inside. Interact with the device on the desk to advance the quest.
From there, return to Ana Bray, where you’ll trigger a text dialogue screen memorializing Helsom and adding him to the Destiny canon as a xenoarchaeologist studying Mars. As Ana explains, “Every log entry I’ve ever heard (about Helsom) made it sound like he was just the happiest guy in the room. His laugh was just….” The text log wraps up the tribute, and you’re awarded an Exotic Cipher item for finding it. Bring that to Xur or a Cryptarch and you can trade it for one of the Exotics that have appeared during the last few seasons of Destiny 2.
Bungie mentioned in a recent blog post that it was adding the tribute to the game, and gave a little more information about Helsom. “He worked closely with teams at both Bungie and (Vicarious Visions) on various projects during our partnership and we wanted to memorialize his contributions in the Destiny universe,” Bungie wrote. “We wish all of his family, friends, and everyone he impacted during his life the very best. Thank you to everyone in the community who joins us in remembering this warm soul.”
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The CW’s sprawling DC superhero universe, the Arrowverse, is about to get a little smaller. Supergirl will be ending its run with Season 6, which is scheduled to premiere next year, GameSpot has confirmed. This is the second Arrowverse series to conclude following the franchise’s titular Arrow, which ended after 8 seasons earlier this year.
The show’s final season will include 20 episodes and will likely arrive at some point in the midseason of 2021, although no premiere date has been set. Production is scheduled to begin later this month.
In an Instagram post, Benoist offered a comment, saying that portraying the character has been “an honor” and has “taught [her] strength [she] didn’t know [she] had.”
Supergirl first launched on CBS back in 2015, but made the jump to The CW beginning with Season 2. There, it was able to join its fellow Arrowverse shows like Flash and Legends of Tomorrow for a more cohesive shared universe. Benoist has since co-starred in universe-wide crossover events to bring her character from her alternate Earth to the newly created “Earth-Prime” alongside heroes like Barry Allen and the late Oliver Queen.
In addition to Benoist’s Supergirl, the show also introduced a host of other adapted DC characters to the Arrowverse, including Lena Luthor (Katie McGrath), the half-sister of the infamous Lex, and Martian Manhunter (David Harewood) a shapeshifting alien. It is unclear what the show’s end will mean for the ensemble, or if any of the supporting cast members will find themselves involved in the other Arrowverse-connected shows. Certainly with all the time-traveling and universe hopping, there is more than enough space for more familiar faces to start cropping up if and when the time comes.
Microsoft’s announcement that its next generation would be called Xbox Series X and Series S got some amount of ribbing–what if people confuse it with the current-gen Xbox One X and One S? Now as the console preorders go live, there’s at least some indication that the naming scheme is leading to mistaken purchases.
According to Amazon’s “Movers & Shakers” chart in the video games category, Xbox One X sales are up 431% as of the time of writing. These kinds of percentage-based charts can be misleading, but that kind of sudden surge at least suggests that some consumers may be buying the system by mistake, intending to preorder the next-gen console. This is speculation, however, so we can’t make definitive conclusions.
There is no similar surge for Xbox One S on the charts. If product confusion were at issue it seems that may be happening too, as customers mistake the One S for the similarly named Series S.
Microsoft, for its part, is trying to simplify the whole idea of generations by emphasizing its consoles as simply Xbox, with the different series acting as model names like phones. That also appears to be a big reason for its Smart Delivery push, to simplify the end-user experience without a lot of futzing over different console configurations.
The news that Microsoft purchased Bethesda Softworks parent company ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion is shaking the video games industry, because it seems like a sea change for the release of the next generation of consoles. Suddenly, Microsoft owns not just Bethesda Game Studios, the maker of the hugely popular Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises, but a number of other studios–like Dishonored developer Arkane Studios, Doom developer id Software, and Wolfenstein developer MachineGames. That’s a heavy lineup of game-makers that, one assumes, will suddenly only be making games for future Xbox machines.
That’s the traditional way of thinking, anyway, and the strategy that has defined various iterations of “console wars” for the last three decades. We’re rapidly hitting the end of a generation greatly defined by exclusive games, or the lack thereof. It’s accepted at this point that Sony came out on top in the eighth generation, at least in competition with Microsoft, in large part because of major PS4 exclusive games such as Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and The Last of Us Part 2. Meanwhile, Microsoft had exclusives of its own, mostly first-party games like Gears 5, Halo 5: Guardians, Sea of Thieves, and Forza Horizon 4. But there always seemed to be fewer of them, receiving less acclaim, and with a longer drought between their releases.
So snagging the maker of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, as well as a bunch of other popular games, makes a lot of sense you were looking to build a stable of next-gen exclusives. But the way Xbox boss Phil Spencer has been talking lately, that might not necessarily be the play here. If we take Spencer’s word for it, the ZeniMax acquisition seems more like Microsoft building on a strategy that goes beyond locking players into a specific platform, in order to get them where they live–to sell them on a subscription service and to create bigger cross-platform player bases, instead of just relying on getting customers to commit to a console.
We know that Microsoft’s big play of late is Xbox Game Pass, a subscription service that allows players to download and play a bunch of games on their Xboxes, PCs, or both. Mixed into Game Pass is cloud gaming, where you stream a game over the internet, allowing you to play Xbox and PC games on a variety of devices, including smartphones, without owning them. Game Pass is Microsoft’s move for the future: It’s a Netflix-like subscription service that collects money from players indefinitely and brings them into the Xbox ecosystem.
One of the big selling points of Game Pass is that it gets you all Xbox first-party games on the day of their release as part of the deal, so adding the games Bethesda makes and publishes to that list suddenly makes the subscription even more desirable–and it was already pretty solid.
But it doesn’t really sound like Microsoft’s current strategy is about getting every game-playing member of the public to buy a new Xbox. Sure, the company would like that, but if there’s a big lesson to take away from the eighth generation, it’s that every new hardware cycle is also a hard reset, and from one generation to another, nothing is guaranteed. Microsoft was extremely competitive with Sony during the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 era, and then Microsoft’s fortunes shifted considerably with the Xbox One. It seems like Spencer and the rest of Microsoft learned that lesson, and they’re less interested in getting people onto a hardware platform for a few years than they are developing a content ecosystem that could last a lot longer.
“As a player you are the centre of our strategy,” Spencer told GI.biz last summer. “Our device is not the centre of our strategy, our game is not the centre of the strategy. We want to enable you to play the games you want to play, with the friends you want to play with, on any device. On TV, the Xbox console is going to be the best way to play console games.”
He added: “I find it completely counter to what gaming is about to say that part of that is to lock people away from being able to experience those games. Or to force someone to buy my specific device on the day that I want them to go buy it, in order to partake in what gaming is about.”
So acquiring Bethesda et al. and sticking all their games solely on Xbox makes sense in the traditional way of thinking, but going by Spencer’s comments, it’s maybe not the future that he and Microsoft are envisioning. After all, the most cogent example of how exclusivity can be a losing strategy comes from Bethesda’s own Skyrim, a game that has been ported to just about every platform available across two hardware generations, because that’s how high the demand was. Microsoft could leverage Elder Scrolls’ popularity as an exclusive to sell consoles, but that would mean missing out on sales on all the other platforms where Skyrim has seen major success. Spencer sounds like he has something else in mind.
In an interview with GameSpot last year, Spencer described the change in the Xbox’s focus through the Xbox One era. That new focus looked past hardware toward being more open, leading to things like Microsoft’s expansion of Minecraft across numerous platforms (most recently PlayStation VR) and allowing cross-play in Xbox and PC games–something Sony has (somewhat begrudgingly) followed suit on. The last year has seen Microsoft push Game Pass as its big initiative–its Game Pass Ultimate cloud gaming service just hit Android devices, and is pretty impressive.
“The number of people that are actually buying a console every generation isn’t growing dramatically, if at all,” Spencer told GameSpot. “At one point you have to recognize that, okay, you can’t just lead with one device. You can’t just say, here’s an Xbox. I’m going to go sell this device to every single person and that’s what they’re going to play on. That just doesn’t work.”
“Nintendo is a strong player in this industry,” Spencer said. “Do I wish every Switch player was also an Xbox owner? That would be awesome, but that’s not going to happen. Sony is the same way. I don’t think gaming is better if Xbox somehow replaces PlayStation.”
Again, it’s tough to see the future, business strategies shift, and who knows if Microsoft and Spencer’s position has changed after acquiring ZeniMax. But if you view the purchase as a part of the vision Spencer previously outlined, then it seems much more likely that at least some games, like Elder Scrolls VI, aren’t going to be locked onto Xbox (in fact, Microsoft has already said that Bethesda games announced for other platforms will stay there). There’s a bigger picture to see.
Maybe Microsoft thinks it can make money on consoles (it can’t be a coincidence that the ZeniMax acquisition news dropped the day before Xbox Series X and S consoles become available for preorder), and subscriptions, and on games on other platforms. Maybe it wants to insulate against potential ebbs in console loyalty in five or seven years, even if it happens to come out swinging this generation. Maybe Microsoft is thinking that it has a worse chance of convincing you to replace the box you play games on with an Xbox–and a better one of turning that box into an Xbox.
It’s hard to do more than speculate. But it does seem like, in paying $7.5 billion for ZeniMax, the chances are better for Microsoft to lose money by walling off games people love on a console not everyone will buy. From the way Spencer has been talking and the moves Microsoft has been making, securing a bunch of console exclusives comes off as shortsighted. We’ll have to wait and see what Microsoft’s actual plans turn out to be, but based on what we’ve heard so far, acquiring Bethesda and its related studios sounds less like a step backward toward traditional console competition than it does a step forward toward something new.
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The 1.0 launch–available on PC via the GOG, Humble, Itch, and Steam stores–is Noita’s “biggest update yet,” according to Nolla Games. It includes new enemies, perks, music, and spells, as well as game improvements and bug fixes. The studio also said the update features “other surprises and perhaps a new game mode,” in addition to Twitch integration that lets viewers vote on in-game events during streams.
To celebrate the launch of Noita’s 1.0 release, Nolla Games is running a sale for the game on Steam. For the next 48 hours, Noita is 20 percent off, slashing the price from $20 to $16. The studio also shared a new announcement trailer, which you can check out below.
Noita is a magical action roguelike in which every pixel is physically simulated. This means that each pixel interacts with the physics of the game world, providing a smoothness to the animation. You can also create your own spells as you delve deeper in the procedurally generated world where death is permanent. Check the PC system requirements below to see if your rig can handle Noita–though the specs are extremely modest.
Full Noita PC System Requirements
Minimum:
OS: Windows Vista, 7, 8/8.1, 10
Processor: Dual Core CPU, Intel i5 or better
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: 512MB VRAM, OpenGL 3.0 support
Storage: 1 GB available space
Recommended:
OS: Windows Vista, 7, 8/8.1, 10
Processor: The more cores the better
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: 1024MB VRAM, OpenGL 3.0 support
Storage: 1 GB available space
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After multiple delays due to the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon Prime Day is happening in just a few short weeks. Prime Day will begin on October 13, according to a report from GameSpot sister site CNET. So if you’ve been waiting to find great deals on tech, gaming, entertainment, and much more, you won’t have to wait much longer.
Amazon hasn’t officially confirmed the date, but the retailer tends to wait until the last minute to announce sale dates. It’s unclear at this time how long Prime Day will last, but 2019’s iteration of the sale took place over 48 hours. As usual, we’d expect all of the best deals to sell out before the sale ends, so you’ll want to browse Amazon first thing on October 13.
Since its debut in 2015, Prime Day has always been hosted in July. The coronavirus pandemic slowed all aspects of manufacturing and shipping to a crawl, which necessitated pushing back the sale. Amazon had initially planned to only delay the sale until August, but then wound up pushing it to September and then again to October. Now we have a finalized date, and hopefully the delays will lead to robust stock for all of the most sought-after products.
For more on the big sale and the types of deals we might see, check out our Prime Day roundup. To take advantage of the deals, you have to be an Amazon Prime subscriber. Prime memberships cost $119 per year or $13 per month. If you haven’t subscribed before, however, you can get a 30-day free trial.
Naughty Dog, the famed studio behind the critically acclaimed post-apocalyptic adventure The Last of Us and its 2020 sequel, has renamed Outbreak Day. From now on, it will be known as The Last of Us Day.
The decision comes in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the viral respiratory disease that has claimed more than 200,000 US lives. Given the nature of the outbreak, Naughty Dog said it didn’t feel right about the celebratory day being called Outbreak Day, especially in the context of current real-world conditions. As such, every September 26 will be called The Last of Us Day instead.
“For the last 7 years, September 26 has been our opportunity to recognize and celebrate the incredible passion of The Last of Us community,” Naughty Dog said in a statement. “However, as we thought about the events of the last year and the challenges we all continue to face with COVID-19, we didn’t feel right continuing on under the ‘Outbreak Day’ banner. While the name and date are rooted in the fiction of the game, September 26 means so much more than lore. It’s about showing our appreciation for our fans.
“That’s why, this Saturday and moving forward, September 26 will be known as The Last of Us Day–a name that not only acknowledges the world around us, but also reflects the growth of the community as we welcome millions of new players with the release of The Last of Us Part II. We have a lot of exciting things planned and we can’t wait to share them with you in just a few days.”
In The Last of Us, September 26 is the day when the cordyceps brain infection–the parasitic fungal virus that attacks the brain and kills its host–reached critical mass and began spreading like wildfire. The infection hit Austin a day later, kicking off the events of the 2013 game.
Outbreak Day, now known as The Last of Us Day, is a celebratory day in which Naughty Dog unveils new The Last of Us content in the form of behind-the-scenes footage, limited-time PSN avatars, additional in-game content, exclusive merchandise, and more. Last year’s event included a look inside The Last of Us Part II demo, a Last of Us PSN sale, the chance to win a signed poster, and more.
The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S preorders go live September 22 at 11 AM ET in the US, and 8 AM BST in the UK, according to Microsoft.
Knowing the time and date makes things much easier to plan for, unlike the surprise PS5 preorder drops we experienced. The downside is we could see even more server problems at major retailers, but hopefully they all learned from the PS5 situation. If you’re looking to preorder an Xbox Series X or Series S in the UK, click here to find out everything you need to know.
Everything You Need to Know About Xbox Series X Preorders at a Glance
Xbox Series X and Series S Release Date: November 10, 2020
Xbox Series X and Series X Preorder Date: September 22, 2020
Xbox Series X Preorder Placeholder Pages
These pages previously held Xbox preorder placeholder pages, although Amazon’s has disappeared into the internet ether. We’ll update them with the most recent links as soon as they become available.
Xbox Series X/S Controller and Accessory UK Preorders
The new Xbox consoles are actually compatible with your older Xbox One controllers, but if you’re looking for that slick next-gen feel to all your handsets, you may want to invest in a controller or two, alongside some new accessories. You can currently preorder the Xbox Series X/S Black, Robot White, and Blue controllers.
Xbox Series X/S are part of the Xbox All Access, in which you can pay a set fee a month and get a new console, alongside Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Both of these will be available from GAME in the UK, and cost as follows. For Xbox Series X you will be paying £28.99 per month, and for the Xbox Series S, you will be paying £20.99 per month. Both are available to sign up for now.
We’ve known for a while now the Xbox Series X is coming November 2020, but the exact preorder date, price, and release date were closely held secrets for what seemed an eternity. Xbox Series X and Series S preorders go live September 22, with a $499 price tag and a November 10 release date.
Make sure to bookmark this page for updates, and for more immediate info about Xbox One X and Xbox Series S preorders when they eventually go live, be sure to follow IGN Deals on Twitter.
The info pages on major retailers have changed to reflect the new information, and some of the sites have removed the option to sign up for information:
Retailers have, for the most part, adapted their earlier Xbox Series X pages to include information on preorders for Xbox Series S as well. They’ve also started updating the pages to reflect the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X November 10 release dates.
Xbox Series X Specs
Microsoft released the official Xbox Series X technical specs on February 24, promising 12 teraflops of graphical processing power and backwards compatibility all the way back to the original Xbox console.
Here’s a quick rundown of the Xbox Series X technical specifications:
Custom-designed AMD Zen 2 and RDNA 2 processor
A “patented form” of variable rate shading (VRS)
DirectX raytracing (hardware accelerated)
SSD storage
HDMI 2.1
120fps support
The console’s Velocity Architecture, Microsoft Says, should mean we’ll see smaller game file sizes, less and faster loading, along with other immediate benefits. Microsoft also showed off the Xbox Series X UI, saying its new interface reduces load times to the home screen on start-up and when returning to it from a game.
Xbox Series X Release Date
The Xbox Series X release date is officially November 10, 2020. It took a long time to get here, but we finally made it.
Are Next Gen Games Going to Be $70?
Pricing on next-gen games is a little complicated. Many Xbox Series X-compatible games launching this fall, including Ubisoft’s fall lineup, will cost $60. Others, like NBA 2K21, will cost $70. But… probably not? Take-Two went back on its initial price point declaration for Xbox Series X and PS5 games, so only time will tell. However, first-party Sony PS5 games are listed at $69.99 on many retailer sites, so it’s entirely possible.
Checking retailer pages for Xbox Series X games, you see the $70 price tag all over the place. Ultimately consumer demand will dictate prices, but for now, the $60 game looks like it’s sticking around, but won’t be much longer.
Xbox Series X Games
Thanks to Microsoft’s years-long push for backwards compatibility, Xbox Series X will launch with “thousands of games.” Some of the big launch-window titles that have been announced include Halo Infinite, Cyberpunk 2077, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Check out our Xbox Series X game list wiki for an up-to-date list of all the confirmed and rumored Series X titles.
How to Preorder Xbox
My recommendation for ensuring you get an Xbox is the same as for the PS5. Sign up for free accounts at the major retailers now, so when the preorders do go live, you can just click through the check out process without needing to enter in your address and billing info while under duress. Keep an eye on the IGN Deals Twitter account, and make sure you have the cash on-hand for retailers like Best Buy and Walmart that put a hold on your account for the full amount.
FIFA 21 will not receive a demo this year so that the game’s developers can focus on “delivering the best full game experience.”
EA Sports took to Twitter to reveal the news, noting that players can still get early access to the game by subscribing to EA Play. FIFA’s yearly demo is a long-standing tradition, which is why this news might be shocking to some fans of the veteran football series.
“We’ve made the decision to focus our development team’s time on delivering the best full game experience for current & next-gen consoles,” EA’s statement reads.
If you still wish to check out the game ahead of launch, EA Play subscribers will be able to jump in and trial FIFA 21 for 10 hours from October 1, ahead of the game’s official release date on October 9.
We aren’t releasing a demo for FIFA 21.
Instead we’ve made the decision to focus our development team’s time on delivering the best full game experience for current & next-gen consoles.
We look forward to EA PLAY members jumping in 10 days from now and launching the game Oct 9.
If you pre-order the FIFA 21 Ultimate or Champions edition, you’ll also be able to access the game three days early on October 6. And if you pick up the current-gen version of FIFA 21, you’ll be able to upgrade to the PS5 or Xbox Series X version at no extra cost due to EA’s Dual Entitlement system.
Action-FPS Bright Memory is “currently in development” for the launch of Xbox Series X and S, with its already-announced follow-up, Bright Memory: Infinite to follow next year.
Announced on the Playism Game Show stream, one-man developer FYQD announced that the game was in development and that he’s “trying to do it at launch”. Alongside that announcement, the developer also confirmed that the game’s follow-up, Bright Memory: Infinite will come to PC and Xbox Series X in 2021.
Bright Memory is a melee-and-ranged FPS developed in FYQD’s spare time and released on Steam in 2019. The game combines a cyberpunk storyline with classic action game combat and environmental puzzles.
Originally envisaged as the first episode in a series, FYQD has now decided to remake Bright Memory and significantly extend it, calling the new game Bright Memory: Infinite.
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].
Microsoft released the official