Apple pulled back the curtain on a new era of Mac during a recent livestream event, where the tech company showed off a new slate of computers powered by its Apple Silicon processor.
These devices come equipped with Apple’s Silicon chip, which the company has called M1 for the sake of naming convention. (Apple’s other chips follow similar naming patterns, including the latest A14 Bionic that’s found in the new iPad Air and iPhone 12 lineup.) The M1 processor is an SoC (system on chip) developed and manufactured by Apple that does a number of beneficial things for the end-user, such as improving performance and battery life.
According to Apple, the chip is built with 5-nanometer processing technology and constructed of 16 billion transistors, making M1 efficient and powerful. The Macs that have this new M1 chip include the Mac Mini (starting at $699), Macbook Air (starting at $999), and Macbook Pro (starting at $1299). These devices are now available to order from Apple and will start shipping next week. The company confirmed all Macs will transition to M1 in the future.
Also during the livestream, Apple announced that the latest macOS update, Big Sur, launches worldwide on Thursday, November 14.
In a replacement for the cancelled TwitchCon, Twitch will host a 12-hour online event titled GlitchCon. It starts at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET on November 14.
With over 425 Twitch creators participating, GlitchCon has packed in the programming. Events that make up the online convention include a small scale esports event with Twitch creators, a cosplay contest, a masked celebrity game, a Twitch chat “game jam,” and a virtual artist alley. The event will close with a concert session hosted by T-Pain and features music from Twitch musicians. See below for a full description of GlitchCon’s components.
Twitch Rivals / GlitchCon Showdown: 16 top Twitch creators will command four Super Teams and compete for $500K. The teams will play Fortnite, League of Legends, Valorant, and Fall Guys for the cash prize.
Twitch / Cosplay Contest, Multiverse Edition: What it says on the tin. Cosplayers will be divided into four divisions, including Needlework, Armor, FX, and Larger Than Life. Kamui Cosplay, KikiKannon, TockCustom, and StellaChuu will be the judges. Participants will compete to be the grand prize winner, division winner, and the audience’s fan-favorite. Cash prizes total $18,000.
Twitch / Guess the Gamer: Popular Twitch personalities will guess the identities of masked celebrities. The audience gets to participate by guessing alongside and helping the Twitch partners with clues. It will be hosted by Sodapoppi, Jericho, and UmiNoKaiju. Twitch streamers who will do the guessing include lilypichu, tfue, djrayraytaiwan, dexbonus, and misskyliee.
Twitch Gaming / Let’s Make a Game: The audience gets to collaborate real-time on a game design. It will be playtested on stream and can be downloaded later.
Twitch Presents / Artist Alley Showcase: Artists will show off their art, and if you want to buy it, you can.
GlitchCon Afterparty: T-Pain hosts, musicians on Twitch play their music. You, ostensibly, party.
Fortnite is getting a second Black Widow skin as part of its Marvel Super Series of tournaments. Players who compete and place well in the tournament will get the skin for free. Everyone else will be able to purchase it in the item shop later on.
The tournament takes place on November 11. You can read the full rules, including the starting times for each region on Epic’s official site. Fortnite already has a Black Widow skin that came before the Season 4 Nexus War. This skin called the “Snow Suit” and looks different.
Winter mission ready ❄️ → Black Widow Cup feat. Marvel Knockout LTM → Duos → Nov 11 🏆 Black Widow (Snow Suit) Outfit 🔗: https://t.co/cEYwqiGFLl Mark your calendars, the final cup in the series is on Nov 18th!
This event is different compared to the previous Ghost Rider and Daredevil tournaments. It features duos instead of trios and will reward the top players from each region with the skin and a special back bling. Here is where you’ll need to place to get the skin for free:
Europe – Top 1,200
NA East – Top 750
NA West – Top 300
Brazil – Top 300
Asia – Top 150
Oceania – Top 150
Middle East – Top 150
The Marvel Knockout tournaments are not a part of Fortnite’s regular battle royale mode. It pits two players against each other with special superhero abilities inspired by characters like Iron Man, Dr. Doom, She-Hulk, and others.
Destiny 2‘s latest big expansion, Beyond Light, is now live. It’s a new chapter in Destiny 2, reworking how the game is played with the new Stasis abilities while removing some older content from the game–although some players are struggling to log in. But while Beyond Light is a big new step for Destiny 2, there’s another one on the horizon: the next-generation versions of the game. Now we know that the new versions of Destiny 2 will have an even smoother multiplayer experience, running at 120 fps on Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.
Bungie made the announcement on an Xbox livestream, although it didn’t provide too many more details. Bungie confirmed that the PS5 will also support 120 fps in the Crucible, with more information coming soon.
Still, 120 fps in the Crucible, Destiny 2’s PvP multiplayer offering, is a huge boost over the current console versions, though, which run at 30 fps. Bungie previously said the next-generation versions of Destiny 2 on Xbox Series X, Series S, and PlayStation 5 will run at 60 fps. Those versions aren’t available yet–they launch on December 8, so if you’re playing Destiny 2 on a Series X/S today or a PS5 later this week, you’ll be running backwards-compatible versions of the game. When the next-gen versions do launch, however, they’ll be free upgrades for anyone who already purchased Beyond Light.
Shudder’s reboot show of Stephen King and George Romero’s much-loved ’80s horror anthology movie Creepshow has proved to be one of the biggest hits for the streaming service. Although Season 2 has been delayed until next year, an animated Halloween special was released last month. It’s now been announced that a Creepshow Chrismas special will be released in December.
The special is titled A Creepshow Holiday Special, and it hits Shudder on December 18. It will consist of a single hour-long Christmas-themed episode, titled “Shapeshifters Anonymous.” The special is written and directed by showrunner Greg Nicotero, based on a story by J.A. Konrath. It stars Anna Camp (Pitch Perfect) and Adam Pally (The Mindy Project). Shudder has released a short synopsis for the Holiday Special, which reads, “Fearing he is a murderer, an anxious man searches for answers for his ‘unique condition’ from an unusual support group.”
In a statement, Nicotero said, “The Spirit of Christmas is alive and well in true Creepshow fashion. Reimagining how we look at the holidays and Santa Claus with an outrageous ensemble cast, a myriad of creepy crawlies and a few thrills and chills shouldn’t be missed.”
A Creepshow Holiday Special isn’t the only seasonal treat heading to Shudder next month either. Legendary host Joe Bob Briggs is back with another episode of the Last Drive-In, which will be a double-bill of holiday horror movies. The service will also add other scary Christmas films like Rare Exports and Sheitan.
Fall Guys is getting another special skin soon. You’ll be able to dress your bean as the goose from House House’s Untitled Goose Game.
The skin will be available on November 13. It comes in two parts and will most likely cost 10 crowns, similar to most other legendary skins. This is the latest crossover skin to come to the game show battle royale. Fall Guys has also had skins from Godzilla, The Messenger,Gris, and other games and movies pop up recently.
Mediatonic showcased the skin on Twitch
Fall Guys also received a midseason update this week. It includes variations on current levels and a new level that’s made up of nothing but fans. The update also includes a number of quality-of-life features and fixes that developer Mediatonic has included in its new issue tracker.
Perfect Match, the mini-game that pushes you to keep track of tiles with pictures of giant fruit on them, is also getting a makeover with the update. A giant beam now spins across the floor, forcing beans to jump and dodge it, which should make it a lot harder to qualify and get to the next round.
Fortnite’s Season 4 is starting to wind down. We’re now past the initial 10 week period and are getting into an extra four weeks of Marvel-focused challenges. A season-ending event should be happening soon, but Epic Games hasn’t given us any hints about what it will include. Players have begun to come up with their own ideas.
One player created a scene of the helicarrier, which serves as a pre-game lobby, falling towards Risky Reels. They made a 3D render of the scene–complete with Iron Man using his suit to prevent the aircraft from crashing–and shared it to the Fortnite subreddit. It’s one theory of how Season 4 will end.
Galactus, a cosmic entity that consumes planets in the Marvel universe, can be seen heading towards the Fortnite island. He’s slowly gotten closer over the course of Season 4. Tony Stark’s named location, Stark Industries, has been changing over the course of season 4 as well. Multiple battle buses, the vehicle that players jump from at the beginning of every match, can be found in his warehouse. Players believe that they’ll somehow be used in the event.
“It seems that Tony Stark is creating 4 Black Hole Battle Buses,” wrote Redditor TheDarkFabledSaber. “It looks like he is on the 2nd one, working on it in the garage workshop. Maybe it will be similar to The End event, but instead of opening a rift the buses will make a large black hole to consume Galactus.”
Galactus Can Be Seen In The Distance
Dozens of players have come up with theories about how the event will change the map. They believe that locations like The Ruins, Coral Castle, Catty Corner, and the Fortilla will be destroyed during the event to pave the way for something new. Epic Games has said that the Season 4 event will be the “biggest one ever” and it will change the future of the game. Troy Baker is rumored to have recorded lines for the event; he previously voiced a character in The Device event.
While Epic Games has said that “everything is connected” in the Fortnite universe, the game is made up of a lot of nonsensical themes and characters. The “different realities” storyline that brought Marvel characters into the game lets the studio do almost anything it wants with the battle royale. The ever-changing nature of the game is one of the reasons it’s been so successful.
There are still three weeks left in the season so we probably won’t see the in-game event until the end of the month, but players are getting tired of Season 4. They hope that this event will bring some change to the map.
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Here’s what we know about The Expanse Season 5’s release date and more.
The Expanse has proven it’s a show that will persevere. It may have a comfy home on Amazon now, but after its original network, Syfy, canceled it following Season 3, its future was much less certain. Thankfully, Season 4 streamed on Amazon Prime last year, and Season 5 is about to arrive.
The Expanse tells the story of a human society hundreds of years in the future who have expanded into outer space–further and further out, thanks to the events of the series, which sees various characters and factions fighting for survival as technology and humanity are gradually altered by an alien “protomolecule.”
That’s the most barebones description we could come up with for the series as a whole. If you haven’t watched it, we definitely recommend catching up–and meanwhile, here’s everything we know about The Expanse Season 5.
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The Expanse Season 5 Release date
The first three episodes of The Expanse Season 5 are hitting Amazon Prime December 16. After that, Amazon will release new episodes weekly until February 3, 2021. That’s right, they’re adopting the same model as The Boys Season 2–because although some fans didn’t enjoy having to wait a week in between new episodes, The Boys is one of Amazon’s most successful shows, and this release model succeeded in creating week-to-week buzz.
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How many episodes?
The Expanse Season 5 will be told across ten episodes. We also know their titles:
Episode 1: Exodus
Episode 2: Churn
Episode 3: Mother
Episode 4: Guagamela
Episode 5: Down and out
Episode 6: Tribes
Episode 7: Oyedeng
Episode 8: Hard Vacuum
Episode 9: Winnipesaukee
Episode 10: Nemesis Games
We’ll leave it to the commenters to try and glean any info from those.
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Is there a trailer?
Amazon released a trailer for The Expanse Season 5 in October 2020. It has plenty of hints for the upcoming episodes, including indications that the main characters will spend much of the season off on separate missions. Frankly, the trailer is also a banger, and has our hype levels through the roof.
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Plot
Here’s the official plot synopsis from Amazon:
“Season 5 of the series picks up as multitudes of humans leave the solar system in search of new homes and vast fortunes on the earth-like worlds beyond the alien Ring, and a heavy price for centuries of exploitation of the Belt finally comes due and a reckoning is at hand. For the crew of the Rocinante and the leaders of the Inner Planets and the Belt, the past and present converge, bringing forth personal challenges that have wide-reaching repercussions throughout the Solar System.”
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Separate storylines
As we’ve noted already, the main characters have individual journeys in Season 5. Amazon shared some of the details in a recent press release: Amos will return to Earth to confront his past, Naomi will reach out to her son and try to save him from his father’s influence, Bobbie and Alex confront the collapse of Mars and chase a shadowy cabal of terrorists and criminals, Holden will deal with the protomolecule, including the aliens who built it and the mystery of what killed them, Drummer will get a new crew and try to escape her past, and Avasarala will fight to prevent a terrorist attack, despite losing her bid for reelection in Season 4.
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On which books will Season 5 be based?
The Expanse is based on the series Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey, a pseudonym for collaborative authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Season 5 will certainly include plot from Nemesis Games, and fans have speculated that it will dip into the following novel, Babylon’s Ashes, as well.
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Returning characters
As a show, The Expanse is always good about including its full cast of characters, even when some are less prominently featured in the book or books on which a given season happens to be based. As such, you should expect to see all the same familiar faces in Season 5: Steven Strait as Jim Holden, Cas Anvar as Alex Kamal, Dominique Tipper as Naomi Nagata, Wes Chatham as Amos Burton, Shohreh Aghdashloo as Chrisjen Avasarala, Frankie Adams as Bobbie Draper, Cara Gee as Drummer, Chad Coleman as Fred Johnson, and more.
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What about Naomi’s son?
Season 4’s finale featured one particularly chilling scene that surely indicates Naomi’s son will play a big role going forward, so you should expect to see both Jasai Chase Owens as Filip Inaros, as well as his father, Keon Alexander as Marco Inaros, returning in Season 5.
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Will Thomas Jane return?
Given the way his storyline ended in Season 4, it seems unlikely that Thomas Jane’s character Miller will appear again on the show, at least not in the same capacity as the protomolecule’s avatar. That said, Jane’s presence may still be felt on the show, since he’s directing an episode in Season 5. Good, because things just aren’t the same without Miller.
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What about Season 6?
There’s already at least one report floating around on the internet that Amazon has greenlit The Expanse Season 6 internally, although that report cites no concrete sources, and the company hasn’t announced anything publicly yet. Even if that’s the case, it’s unclear when production might commence, since the COVID-19 pandemic is still affecting all aspects of the entertainment industry.
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Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company
With the Beyond Light expansion out now on all platforms, some Destiny 2 players are experiencing connectivity issues when attempting to load into the looter-shooter.
Developer Bungie said it’s investigating the server issues while clarifying that improvements are being made to server connectivity. The studio is asking players to “stay tuned for updates” as it works on ironing out the problem. There’s no confirmation on why the servers crashed.
DownDectotor reports that 78% of people have reported server connection issues while 20% say they are having trouble logging into Destiny 2. 1% report issues with the game’s website.
We are still continuing to investigate various error codes and connectivity issues affecting players on all platforms.
These server issues come not long after Beyond Light launched on November 10 for PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One. The expansion, along with the base Destiny 2 game, will hit PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S / Series X on December 8 as a free next-gen upgrade.
Destiny 2’s massive Update 3.0 has also arrived at the same time as the Beyond Light expansion. The patch overhauls the economy, rebalances weapons, and removes gambit prime.
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If you’re currently having some trouble signing into Xbox Live on your brand-new Xbox Series X|Series S (or on any Xbox platform in general), Microsoft is aware of the problem. The Xbox team is working on a fix.
“We’re aware that users are currently unable to sign into Xbox Live on various platforms,” Xbox Support posted on Twitter. “The right teams are looking into the issue and working on a fix.” You can follow the account to get updates on the issue at hand, or stay tuned to the Xbox Live Status page.
Microsoft has officially transitioned into the next console generation following the release of Xbox Series X|S. If you’re thinking of picking up either console but aren’t sure which to go for, editor Michael Higham has you covered with reviews for both. They’re listed below.
Xbox Series X|S Reviews
While you wait for Xbox Live to come back on, you can think about which of the new Xbox Game Pass titles you want to download next. Xbox is adding over 10 titles to Xbox Game Pass this month, including Tetris Effect: Connected, River City Girls, and Destiny 2: Beyond Light.
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