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It seems Ubisoft is preparing to ramp up its game development divisions, as a series of new job posts suggest a Sydney-based studio is set to open.

Ubisoft posted 12 new openings on its jobs portal, all of which are based in Sydney, Australia. According to Screen Hub, offices in the Australian region specialize in sales, marketing, and distribution. However, it’s looking like Ubisoft may want to tap the creative talent in the country. The listings suggest this Sydney studio will work on some online multiplatform AAA title.

The senior core engineer, for example, is someone that will work on “a new multiplatform AAA project.” Meanwhile, the gameplay engineer will collaborate with the company’s San Francisco office to “create fun experiences” while working with a “cohesive online game team.”

Furthermore, Ubisoft may be prioritizing realism with this Sydney-based studio. The senior animator will emphasize “realistic physics with character movement and motivation through acting.” As will the environment artist, who will be in charge of creating “a multiplayer game in a realistic setting.”

According to each job listing, Ubisoft’s Sydney office currently “comprises of 29 people” dedicated to bringing games to the Australian market via distribution, finance, marketing, operations, sales, and now, game development. The company wrote that the culture in the office is “unique and vibrant”

We’ve reached out to Ubisoft and will update this post should we hear back.

There are three things you can count on in life: death, taxes, and Vin Diesel saving the day with the power of family. July isn’t even a week old and the hottest meme of the year is riding in hot thanks to the global success of Fast 9, as the latest film in the Fast & Furious series once again mixes outlandish stunts with a message of family bonding. It’s a theme that might be starting to wear thin with fans, as they’ve taken to social media and forums to have some fun with Vin Diesel’s character of Dom Toretto and how he can seemingly break the very laws of physics when a loved one is in danger.

No matter the movie, video game, or even anime, there’s nothing that family can’t solve according to these memes.

In case you missed it, Fast 9 isn’t just a ridiculously fun high note for the entire Fast Saga series but also a great excuse to venture back into cinemas. You can read more about the film in our Fast 9 review, or if you feel like mulling over some conspiracy theories then you can check out why Dom never mentioned his brother John Cena in the last eight films or what the mid-credits scene might mean for the final film in the franchise.

Marvel’s next big movie, Black Widow, opens in theaters and on Disney Plus with Premier Access this Friday, July 9, but you don’t need to wait until then to get a glimpse at the film.

Marvel has published a minute-long clip from the movie that shows Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena (Florence Pugh) helping David Harbour’s character, Alexei Shostakov, break out of prison. “A family that plans a prison escape together, stays together ❤️,” reads a line from the clip’s description.

Natasha and Yelena are hovering above the prison in a helicopter, giving Alexei instructions on what to do next to get free. The odds don’t look good, and this clip unfortunately ends before the pivotal moment. Alexei uses his super strength to climb the walls of the prison, set in a frozen landscape, but he gets zapped by a guard and falls crashing down back onto the prison floor.

For more, check out GameSpot’s Black Widow review and review scores from across the internet. You can also check out GameSpot’s primer below to find out how to stream Black Widow this Friday from the comfort of your couch:

“Despite strong performances from the leads and the addition of a couple of welcome new characters who may spice up the MCU’s future, this Natasha side story has plenty of inherent problems that drag it down regardless of any external factors,” GameSpot’s Michael Rougeau said in his Black Widow review.

The full trailer for Transformers: War for Cybertron: Kingdom is here. The third and final part of Netflix’s animated Transformers series releases on July 29.

As teased last month, War for Cybertron: Kingdom introduces characters from the popular Beast Wars spin-off. Optimus Prime and the Autobots are in a race against the evil Decepticons to locate the missing AllSpark. The chase leads them to an ancient planet inhabited by dinosaurs–and the Predacons and Maximals, the two warring factions from Beast Wars. It looks like another stylishly animated adventure, that should keep fans happy while they wait for next live-action Transformers movie. Check the trailer out below:

Transformers: War for Cybertron: Kingdom is a six episode series. It follows War for Cybertron: Siege, which was released in July last year, and War for Cybertron: Earthrise, which followed in December.

Even though this series is about to end, there’s lots more Transformers on the way. The next movie is titled Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts, and as the title suggests, it will also feature Beast Wars characters. It’s currently in production ahead of a June 2022 release and is directed by Creed II’s Steven Caple Jr.

There’s also another live-action movie, directed by Angel Manuel Soto, in development, plus a new animated series, which is being produced by Nickelodeon. In February, it was reported that it will be a 26-episode “action-comedy series” that focuses on a new species of transforming robots.

Originally scheduled for a 2021 launch, The King of Fighters XV shifted its release date to Q1 2022–January to March–as developer SNK stated that a rise in COVID-19 cases within Japan was the cause of the delay in development. As for the platforms that The King of Fighters XV will launch on, a new tweet from SNK launch has confirmed that the game will arrive on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC for the Epic Games Store and Steam. Xbox One, however, isn’t listed.

In case you missed it, SNK has been dropping a steady supply of character trailers ever since the game was announced. Of its massive roster, you can catch trailers of Leona Heidern, Shermie, Shiranui, and a whole lot more.

SNK has also teased updated graphics for The King of Fighters XV while confirming that the game will feature rollback netcode. It has been five years since the last game in the King of Fighters series, and the latest chapter will have some moderately-sized boots to fill when it lands.

“With plenty of opportunities available online or off, KOF 14 is a well-executed addition to the revered fighting series,” Matt Espineli wrote in his King of Fighters XIV review. “Those disappointed in its new visuals may be unwilling to give it a chance, but if you remain steadfast in parsing through the multiple layers of its mechanics, you’ll be rewarded with one of the most accessible, satisfying entries in the series to date.”

Paddington 3 is expected to begin filming sometime during Q2 2022, according to Deadline. The date was shared by production company Studiocanal during the Cannes Film Festival.

Expectations are high for this third outing to surpass its predecessors–after all, Paddington 2 was the film that briefly dethroned Citizen Kane as the greatest film of all time, according to Rotten Tomatoes. It was announced earlier this year that Paddington 3 was finally in development after Paddington 2 hit theaters in 2018, along with the fact that Paul King–who wrote and directed the first two films–would be involved in some capacity, but not directing.

It was later announced that King would instead be directing the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory prequel Wonka, which was announced in January. The Wonka reboot, in turn, isn’t expected to hit theaters until sometime in March 2023. Actor Timothee Chalamet (Call Me by Your Name) was cast in the titular role this May.

Paddington 3 will have a story by King, Simon Farnaby, and Mark Burton. The screenplay will be written by Burton, Jon Foster, and James Lamont. At Cannes, Studiocanal also shared that the production company plans to invest $1 billion between now and 2024 in the film. The company will also be producing a Season 3 of the counterpart TV series, The Adventures of Paddington.

Fortnite dataminers are at it again, this time apparently unearthing a major crossover with LA Lakers star LeBron James. The King’s Bling Quests and associated cosmetics seem just about ready to arrive in the game, and we could see The King drop onto the island of Apollo in just a few days with a brand-new Fortnite LeBron James skin.

Dataminers say the King’s Bling Quests will allow players to earn various cosmetics for the basketball superstar beginning next week when he arrives on July 14. Across his cosmetic set, players can gild their items like Fortnite’s gold-obsessed original anti-hero, Midas. If players complete all of LeBron’s related challenges, they can eventually unlock a gold slider, letting them choose just how gilded they want each item to be.

While images of the Fortnite LeBron skin or his related accessories like Back Bling, Pickaxe, and Emotes have not yet been discovered, they’re expected to be decrypted by the always avid Fortnite datamining community when Fortnite patch 17.20 goes live next week, a day before LeBron’s expected due date.

The launch of LeBron is corroborated by a recently commissioned mural spotted in Chicago which vaguely teased a new addition to the game, though before these datamined leaks, it wasn’t yet understood what it meant. The mural merely mentioned a date, July 14, 2021, and featured what looks like a future fantasy Back Bling and gold crown for what we now assume is the LeBron James crossover set.

The assumed launch date also fits nicely with the launch of Space Jam: A New Legacy which stars LeBron James and debuts in theaters on July 16. We’ve seen Epic release tie-ins with similar attention to timing, like the recent Loki skin which came on the heels of the villain’s Disney+ premiere.

The LeBron James Fortnite skin was previously leaked as a potential future collaboration during the Epic versus Apple court battle. Some of the other leaked skins at that time, like Batman Looper, have been released since then, while others, like Naruto, haven’t appeared in the game yet and may never do so. Those same court proceedings did tip off the Fortnite community to the recent NBA crossover, however.

We don’t know yet whether LeBron will be a paid or free cosmetic, but given that Season 7’s midseason “secret” skin is Superman, we expect LeBron to fetch a few V-Bucks in the Item Shop, making his associated King’s Bling Quests entirely missable for players who don’t buy the set.

While we wait for The King to hit the Courtnite–er, Fortnite–we are all witnesses to the incoming Week 5 Alien Artifacts and Week 5 challenges.

Xbox has just released a ’90s-style R&B music video about its subscription service, Xbox All Access. And that’s not even the strangest thing about it. The song is performed by All-4-One, the hit R&B group best known for the song ‘I Swear’. And the song they are singing is an Xbox-themed remix of ‘I Swear’.

No, I’m not making this up. I swear.

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The song reimagines the 1994 hit as ‘It’s All There’, a ballad about the virtues of the Xbox All Access subscription, which includes a new Xbox console and Game Pass Ultimate for a monthly price. The music video that accompanies the track features All-4-One singing in a variety of incredibly 1990s locations – sometimes wearing white suits, sometimes nylon tracksuits – all in soft focus with a gentle breeze. The video has a storyline, too, about a woman upgrading her aging OG Xbox One for a new Xbox Series S through Xbox All Access. It’s a… trip, to say the least.

Xbox All Access provides users with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which means you can use Xbox Cloud Gaming. The service is now fully available to all Ultimate users across Windows, Apple and Android devices. The system appears to now be at least partially powered by Xbox Series X server blades, meaning better performance.

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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.

The Witcher: Blood Origin has expanded its cast with Star Trek: Discovery alum Michelle Yeoh.

Netflix announced on Tuesday that Yeoh will play Scían in the upcoming prequel series. Scían is described as being the “very last of her nomadic tribe of sword-elves” and, according to her official character description, “no one can come close to her artistry with the blade, and no one carries as much loss within their heart.”

Set in an elven world 1200 years before The Witcher, Blood Origin will see Scían launch herself into a deadly quest to “retrieve a stolen sacred sword, taken from her fallen tribe by nefarious means.” It sounds like her actions will have a great impact on the story, as her mission is said to “change the outcome of the Continent.”

Yeoh recently starred in CBS’ Star Trek: Discovery alongside Mel Gibson and Frank Grillo. Her recent feature credits include Boss Level, Last Christmas, and Crazy Rich Asians. Earlier in her career, she appeared in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, as well as Memoirs of a Geisha, and the 1997 James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies opposite Pierce Brosnan’s 007.

She joins Laurence O’Fuarain in the cast of Blood Origin. O’Fuarain will star in the role of Fjall, a character that “carries a deep scar within” from “the death of a loved one who fell in battle trying to save him.” In the series, he will find himself “fighting beside the most unlikely of allies as he carves a path of vengeance across a continent in turmoil.”

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Blood Origin is being developed by the original series’ showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, and Declan de Barra who wrote The Witcher S1 episode ‘Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials.’ The Witcher novelist Andrzej Sapkowski is also onboard as a creative consultant. Netflix hasn’t set a release date for Blood Origin yet, but WitcherCon may reveal more details.

The upcoming virtual fan event will feature several interactive panels, cast conversations, game developer discussions, quiz-style trivia games, and so much more. The event, hosted by Julia Hardy, will run across two separate streams over consecutive days, with each one offering unique, exclusive content.

The digital convention will stream on Netflix and CD Projekt Red’s YouTube and Twitch channels. WitcherCon will first air on July 9 at 7:00 PM (CEST), with the second stream beginning at 03:00 AM (CEST) on July 10. If you’re interested in virtually attending the event, we have a rundown of everything you need to know, including the show’s full schedule.

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This story is developing…

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Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Sony has just announced that a new State of Play will air on Thursday, July 8 at 2 PM PT/5 PM ET. Bethesda’s upcoming title, Deathloop, is the main star here with nine minutes of extended gameplay footage. Cole will use his abilities to sneak around Blackreef Island or just simply go in guns blazing with his weapons.

The presentation’s total run time will be about 30 minutes, with an additional look at more third-party titles and indies to round it out. Sony also clarified that the showcase will not include any updates regarding the next God of War game and Horizon Forbidden West, as well as any new hardware updates such as the next generation of PlayStation VR.

Deathloop is slated for a September 14 launch on PlayStation 5 and PC after being delayed from May 21. Sony recently announced that the next God of War’s release date would be pushed back to sometime in 2022, while PlayStation is still hoping it can still launch Horizon Forbidden West this year. According to Bloomberg, the next generation of PlayStation VR should release in late 2022 as well.