Marvel’s Avengers is about to get a little bit bigger. The game’s first post-launch hero, Kate Bishop, is coming to the game on December 8 as part of Operation: Kate Bishop — Taking AIM. A new villain joins the action, as well, and the story content will just be the first half of a saga that will continue when Clint Barton joins next year.
The Taking AIM story is intended to be played after you’ve finished the main Reassemble campaign, as it takes place a short time after it.
“In Taking AIM, Kate Bishop, master archer and skilled gymnast, resurfaces after her investigation of Nick Fury’s disappearance following A-Day leads to her mentor Clint Barton (aka Hawkeye) going missing as well,” Square Enix said in the announcement. “As she unravels the mystery behind the sudden appearance of the time-warping Tachyon Rifts, she uncovers a twisted new plan from AIM, which pushes her to work with the Avengers once again.”
Bishop makes use of quantum energy to power her abilities, allowing her to move at a rapid pace as she deals sword damage and fires her bow. She has a double-jump and air dash, as well, and can even parry enemies before taking them out from behind. She even mas multiple arrows, including explosive arrows and a scatter shot that should be familiar to old-school Hanzo players in Overwatch.
The villain in this new operation is the Super Adaptoid, and like the name implies, it’s able to mimic the Avengers’ own attacks. What is more terrifying than having to fight a version of yourself?
Marvel’s Avengers is available now on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Stadia, with next-gen versions coming with free upgrades in 2021. Love Has No Labels, Square Enix, and Crystal Dynamics recently announced a new partnership campaign to encourage Americans to accept others for their differences. It kicked off with a trailer.
TV discounts are pretty normal, but Black Friday 2020 will have some of the best 4K TV deals we’ve seen all year. One of them is a Vizio V-Series 70-inch 4K TV for only $478 (normally $650) at Walmart. This deal will go live on November 25 at 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET, and we’re expecting it to sell out extremely fast. We’ve already seen a number of 4K TVs go on sale and sell out quickly, so if you’re interested in this deal, you’ll want to jump on it as soon as it goes live.
The 70-inch Vizio V-Series 4K TV features one HDMI 2.1 port, making it compatible with the PS5 and Xbox Series X’s 2.1 features. However, it only has a 60Hz display, so it won’t be able to play any games at 120Hz. You will, however, be able to make use of variable refresh rate (VRR) and auto low-latency mode (ALLM), which are both very useful.
Other features this TV offers include built-in streaming services and free Vizio streaming channels as well as Apple AirPlay and Chromecast. It also supports Dolby Vision, HDR10+, and HLG as well as Alexa and Google voice assistants.
If you’re looking for more 4K TV deals, retailers like Walmart and Best Buy have released their Black Friday 2020 ads and shown exactly which televisions will be on sale during Black Friday week. There are a lot of great gaming monitor deals as well, if you prefer the faster response time and smaller sizes those provide. Plus, see our guide to picking the best TV for gaming on PS5 and Xbox Series X.
The legal battle between Epic and Apple has become a staple of the internet the past few months, with things continuing to escalate after the original conflict between the two over Apple’s in-game payment fee policies. Now it seems Epic CEO has upped the ante again with a controversial statement regarding the importance of this fight.
In a conversation during the two-day Dealbook event on November 18, when asked about the legal fight with Apple, Sweeney likened the proceedings to civil rights struggles in the US. “It’s everybody’s duty to fight. It’s not just an option that somebody’s lawyers might decide, but it’s actually our duty to fight that. If we had adhered to all of Apple’s terms and, you know, taken their 30% payment processing fees and passed the cost along to our customers, then that would be Epic colluding with Apple to restrain competition on iOS and to inflate prices for consumers,” Sweeney said.
“So going along with Apple’s agreement is what is wrong. And that’s why Epic mounted a challenge to this, and you know you can hear of any, and [inaudible] to civil rights fights, where there were actual laws on the books, and the laws were wrong. And people disobeyed them, and it was not wrong to disobey them because to go along with them would be collusion to make them status quo.”
This remark came after Apple’s announcement that they will be reducing App Store commissions paid by devs to 15% on in-app purchases, rather than the standard 30%, for developers earning less than $1 million per year. This decision may be in response to investigations into Apple being conducted by Congress, the European Union, the Justice Department, and the Federal Trade Commission on antitrust grounds.
Sweeney told the Wall Street Journal that he thinks Apple is “hoping to remove enough critics that they can get away with their blockade on competition and 30% tax on most in-app purchases. But consumers will still pay inflated prices marked up by the Apple tax.”
In its counter suit, Apple has stated that Epic is not some antitrust underdog, but rather a “multi-billion dollar enterprise that simply wants to pay nothing for the tremendous value it derives from the App Store.” Currently, there isn’t a native version of Fortnite available on iOS, but a GeForce Now version may make it viable for iOS users in the future. It remains to be seen how this fight will pan out.
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Even though podcasts have been with us for over 15 years, they’ve never been more popular than they are right now. The medium has long ceased being the domain of amateur broadcasters, with most major media companies and publishers getting in on the game. Marvel Entertainment is now set to produce a series of original shows for SiriusXM.
Marvel’s podcasts will be part of a major expansion of podcast releases by SiriusXM and are the result of a multi-year deal the companies signed in 2019. One of the big new Marvel shows is titled Marvel’s Wastelanders, and will feature older heroes such as Old Man Star-Lord, Grey Widow, Old Man Hawkeye, and Old Man Logan. This will be a multi-part scripted show set to premiere in 2021.
Other new Marvel podcasts include Marvel/Method, a weekly show in which rapper/actor Method Man interviews guests about pop culture, and Marvel’s Declassified, a narrative history of Marvel Comics. These shows will premiere on November 19 and December 8 respectively.
SiriusXM subscribers will also be able to check out new episodes of current on-going Marvel podcasts, such as This Week in Marvel, Women of Marvel, Marvel’s Pull List, and a new Spanish-language version of Marvel’s Wolverine: The Long Night.
In a statement, Dan Buckley, president of Marvel Entertainment, said, “Marvel has always told stories to entertain and inspire. And just as Marvel’s stories began in the comics and grew into the rich universe we know today, we see audio storytelling as just the beginning of unlimited possibilities for our brand. Our fans are consuming content more than ever, and now wherever they are, they can explore the Marvel Universe through brand-new and ongoing podcasts that bring Marvel together with the world and people around us, along with exciting new scripted content coming on SiriusXM’s platform next year.”
In related news, the premiere date of the first Disney+ Marvel show, WandaVision, has been confirmed. The series will hit Disney’s streaming platform on January 15 and will star Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany as Wanda Maximoff and Vision.
Kate Bishop will arrive in Marvel’s Avengers on December 8.
After a delay in October, Kate Bishop will come to the game as part of a new campaign Operation, Taking A.I.M.
“Kate is searching for her former mentor, Hawkeye,” reads the offical blurb, “but along the way she discovers a conspiracy involving Nick Fury, time travel, and a frightening new enemy.”
World of Warcraft‘s upcoming expansion, Shadowlands, introduces a series of new character customization options that give players access to more skin tones, eye colors, and hairstyles to better represent themselves in the game.
Assistant lead quest designer Johnny Cash told GameSpot in a new interview that these new creation tools came directly from feedback from the community, along with the desires of the development team. Cash also spoke to us about the new character Pelagos, who is among WoW’s first trans characters.
The updated WoW character creation screen
“There was a lot of push during this expansion, both from the team and from the community, to want to be able to express themselves better,” Cash said. “And I think humans are the best example of that. We had people that said, ‘I love Azeroth and I play all the time but I can’t make a character who looks like me.’ That really was something we took to heart and that was really the start of the effort with all the new character customization options.”
The focus of the options will be available for human characters, but Blizzard is hoping to expand this to the game’s other races down the road.
“Humans being the beginning of that, and then going into our other races too, looking for other opportunities … whether they want to look like themselves or they want to look like something very different from themselves. [Our goal is to] give players more options than they’ve had before,” Cash said.
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Cash also mentioned that Blizzard hopes to continue adding more customization items in the future, though he did not share any specific plans. Also coming in Shadowlands is the ability to change your gender without paying for it.
The customization options also include things like tattoos, jewelry, beards, scars, and flowers for their hair. Additionally, some of the customization items that were previously dependent on other choices are now freed up. For example, a hair color would previously lock you into the same color for face tattoos, but now you can mix and match freely. For Worgen players, the game now lets you change your appearance independently through a streamlined menu and system.
Also in our interview, Cash spoke about the new Shadowlands character, Pelagos, who is trans. Cash said the developers wanted to create a character who was a World of Warcraft expression of trans, and the team went to great lengths to ensure this was done appropriately.
“The designers wanted to put together a character who was the Shadowlands’ expression of trans. And what does that look like? Can we do that justice and have a character that feels genuine and make it speak to some of these things?” Cash said. “So working with our LGBT group internally, getting feedback from the voice actor, getting feedback from the community, making sure our writing was done in a way that was genuine, that was heartfelt. And that’s just one of many characters that falls into diverse spaces.”
“At the end of the day, my point being, that we truly earnestly believe that Azeroth is a place for everyone and so there is a lot of effort in Shadowlands to make that more true than it’s ever been,” Cash added.
In July, Blizzard shared the first details surrounding Pelagos and his story. Pelagos presented as a woman in his mortal life, but now lives as a man in the afterlife in Shadowlands. Fans spoke up when the game identified him using they/them pronouns, and this was changed to he/him in the alpha.
“The team had originally written him to use they/them pronouns, but received feedback that he/him would be more respectful of the character’s wishes to be identified as a man. This change is simply the result of us listening and responding to that feedback,” Blizzard said at the time.
Following a delay, Shadowlands launches on November 23 on PC. Alongside the standard edition, you can preorder a World of Warcraft: Shadowlands collector’s edition for $120. It includes a level boost, flying mount, transmog quest, pet, weapon effect, and more.
Having originally released all the way back in 2004, Blizzard’s genre-defining MMO World of Warcraft has 16 years of history now under its belt. As such, starting the game right now might seem too daunting for some players.
Blizzard’s Johnny Cash spoke to GameSpot recently about this issue and how the new Shadowlands expansion is purposefully trying to offer a better new player experience. Part of this is through the introduction of a new starting zone, Exile’s Reach, along with the game’s first “level squish.” With Shadowlands, players who reached the 120 level cap are being reduced to 50, with 60 standing as the new cap.
“One of our major goals for Shadowlands was we wanted to make WoW more accessible to people,” Cash said. “WoW is a game that’s been around for quite a long time. It has an immense legacy to it. And one of the growing pains as the game has gotten older is that we had 120 levels that people needed to work through to get a character to play with their friends or to join their raid group as an alt, or whatever they wanted to do.”
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Cash added that as Blizzard released more and more expansions, players would hop around between them and not get through the story of any one in particular. With Shadowlands, Blizzard has made changes to improve the leveling experience which in turn should help people engaged and driving toward finishing what they start.
“Along the way, as we’ve had all these different expansions and different themes, we found that people would end up hopping around expansions a lot and not getting the whole story. So stepping back and looking at some of these challenges in front of us, and looking at Shadowlands as an opportunity to set the standard for how we want the game to feel for a levelling player.”
“Changing the levels is just one part of that equation. So what we ended up actually doing, in summation, was really looking at the entire flow. Looking at the new player experience with Exile’s Reach that really broke down the fundamentals of how to even play the game and to make sure that that was accessible to new players, and doing a whole lot of research and testing and iteration, to make sure that someone unfamiliar with the game could hop in and play,” Cash added.
In fact, the bulk of these changes came to WoW through its pre-patch, and Cash remarked that the updates have been “very well received.”
Regarding the leveling in particular, Cash said one of the guiding philosophies was to help players to feel like gaining a new level was actually meaningful. To that end, every time players ding a new level, they’re guaranteed to receive something.
“We also wanted to make sure that every level meant something. Previously, it felt like you could go long stretches without really getting anything,” Cash said. “That just wasn’t how we wanted the game to feel. So now every single time you level you get at least one thing, whether that’s an upgrade to a spell, a new ability entirely, access to a dungeon, whatever it might be. Every time you level you are getting something for that achievement, beyond just the stats increase.”
Apple will pay $113 million to settle allegations as to why it purposefully slowed down iPhone 6s, 7s, and SEs in 2016.
33 US states decided to take Apple to court over the practice of purposely slowing down iPhone performance, claiming that Apple throttled iPhone 6, 7, and SE units with the intent to push those iPhone owners into buying new devices.. Now the company is settling for $113 million, according to the BBC.
The 33 states in the lawsuit claimed that Apple acted deceptively and should have either replaced batteries for users or disclosed the issue.
“Many consumers decided that the only way to get improved performance was to purchase a newer-model iPhone from Apple,” Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich said in a court document from the lawsuit. “Apple, of course, fully understood such effect on sales.”
Apple has admitted that it has slowed down older iPhones, but has said that phones are in fact slowed to preserve battery life when new updates hit. It acknowledged this in 2017 after researchers determined there were slowdowns on older models of phones, the BBC reports. Apple has always denied the decision was made for financial gain.
The $113 million settlement does not require Apple to admit it did anything wrong or that it broke the law. The company did, however, agree to provide “truthful information” about iPhone batteries across its website, update notes and phone settings for the next three years. This settlement is different from the one Apple agreed to in March for a $500 million class action lawsuit.
The company still has battles to wage in court despite this settlement, namely the case between it and Epic Games. You can read about how Apple believes Epic requested a special deal in regards to the financial agreement made between the two when Epic put Fortnite on the Apple App Store, and then read how some of Apple’s claims it brought to court against Epic were recently thrown out by a judge.
For there not really being a lot of information about Season 10 of American Horror Story, there is an awful lot about it being steadily trickled out about it (and also a planned spin-off that is equally mysterious). But recently, series co-creator Ryan Murphy has unveiled a creepy audition tape on Twitter, which is probably best first viewed before dissected in the limited ways we can. Check out the tweeted casting video below, which claims to also give away the season’s focus–or at least its title?
The video contains performer Spencer Novich’s audition, who maybe is some sort of zombie or undead creature. His physicality is impressive, though also not a great shock based on his website that indicates he has done over a thousand performances with the Cirque du Soleil. In other words, in our professional opinion, you can expect some pretty creepy stuff from this dude that won’t need to be rendered with computers. Novich’s Twitter also has many videos giving a sense of his somewhat oddball personality, which he may be allowed to bring to his AHS role.
But what it all means or is intended to mean, who the heck knows. You could theorize and discuss with your fellow fans about all sorts of hidden meaning here, though it would probably be smart to pace yourself. There are still years ahead of these kinds of slow-burn enigmas–earlier this year FX has renewed the show up until Season 13.
In the meantime, AHS Season 9 has just landed on Netflix, so there’s at least a few more hours to tide you over until more information comes out.
Black Friday 2020 is nearly here, but some of the discounts have already begun to appear. Below, we’re tracking all of Best Buy’s early Black Friday deals, as well as the discounts the big blue retailer has announced for the big day itself. Whether you’re looking for a deal on video games, TVs, or other electronics, there’s a lot of savings to be had.
If you want a look at the full slate of deals, check out Best Buy’s Black Friday ad. And if you’re interested in even more deals during the shopping event, be sure to check out our Best Black Friday Deals mega-post, where we’re tracking all the best deals available now, through Black Friday, and onto Cyber Monday.
Best Buy Early Black Friday Deals (LIVE NOW)
Best Buy is treating Black Friday more like a month-long event than a single-day sale. That means a cascade of discounts will be available during the run-up to the big day.
Best Buy’s Black Friday Sale starts online on Sunday, November 22. The retailer isn’t being more specific than that, apparently in an effort to make sure the site doesn’t crash. So check back regularly if you’re itching to grab some deals.
Best Buy Black Friday Deals (NOT YET LIVE)
Here’s where we’ll put the best Black Friday deals you’ll find at Best Buy once the deals go live. Some of them will be available on Sunday, November 22, while others will go live on Best Buy’s website on Thursday, November 26 (a.k.a. Thanksgiving). If this section is empty as you read this, rest assured we’re working to fill it up in time for the sales to go live.
Each Black Friday, Nintendo generally offers a Switch bundle that includes the console and an extra or two for the normal price of the Switch itself. This year’s Black Friday Switch bundle goes live Sunday, November 22. It includes a Nintendo Switch, a digital copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and three months of Nintendo Switch Online, all for $299. The Best Buy listing is already up (though the deal isn’t available yet).
How to Get Free Shipping at Best Buy
Best Buy offers free shipping on all orders $35 and up. Many items qualify for free next-day delivery. Free curbside pickup is also available at most locations. Same-day delivery may also be available, though additional fees may apply.
What Is My Best Buy?
My Best Buy is a free membership program that gets you access to certain bonuses. Preordering some video games, for instance, gets My Best Buy members a $10 credit they can spend on future purchases. You also get access to special sales and you accrue points for every dollar you spend. Additional paid membership levels that grant more bonuses are also available. You can find more information and sign up here.
Best Buy’s Extended Return Policy
‘Tis the season for gift shopping, which means Best Buy’s extended return policy is now in place. Basically, most items you buy between October 13, 2020 and January 2, 2021 have an extended return period that lasts through January 16, 2021. Some restrictions apply; you can find the full details here.
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Chris Reed is a commerce editor and bonafide deals expert at IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.
