All The Cyberpunk 2077 Delays

First Delay To September 17, 2020

First Delay To September 17, 2020

Setting the tone for how 2020 was destined to go, CDPR announced its first (real) Cyberpunk delay in January. This is still the biggest of its delays, pushing the game from a spring release to the fall. The new date was set for September 17, where surely it would remain.

In a statement explaining the move, the studio chalked up the delay to the massive scale of the game and its vision:

“We are currently at a state where the game is complete and playable, but there’s still work to be done. Night City is massive–full of stories, content, and places to visit, but due to the sheer scale and complexity of it all, we need more time to finish playtesting, fixing, and polishing. We want Cyberpunk 2077 to be our crowning achievement for this generation and postponing launch will give the precious months we need to make the game perfect.”

Persona 5 Scramble Localization No Longer Mentioned In Latest Koei Tecmo Financials

This is not looking cool, Joker. The beloved Persona series has received many spinoffs over the years, from fighting games to dance-offs, and many fans expressed excitement for the musou-style follow-up Persona 5 Scramble. However, there’s a new wrinkle: Publisher Koei Tecmo released its new financial results recently, and a Western localization of Scramble isn’t mentioned at all.

A previous financial report from Koei Tecmo mentioned a Persona 5 Scramble back in July. However, as spotted by Siliconera, that report has now been replaced with a revised version that removes any mention of such a release. This latest financial information indicates that the company is focusing on its other major musou spin-off, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, which will receive a simultaneous worldwide release on November 20.

It’s unclear if this means that Persona 5 Scramble’s Western release will be delayed or outright cancelled. Considering the outsized popularity of Persona 5, it would seem hard to believe that the game won’t make its way to North America and Europe, but stranger things have happened. (I guess you could say we never saw it coming.) Scramble may come out under the title Persona 5 Strikers in English-speaking territories, based on a Sega trademark filing. The game is expected to come to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.

Now Playing: Persona 5 Scramble Is More Of A Sequel Than You Think

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Anime Is Becoming a Huge Success for Netflix

Netflix has announced that it plans to produce more anime content after noting an exceptional uptake in anime streaming on the platform.

Variety reports that Netflix’s investment in anime has been going well in terms of viewership, with its mainstream popularity bringing new audiences to the medium in bigger numbers than ever before. According to new statistics, over 100 million households globally watched at least one anime title on the platform between October of last year and September of this year, which is a noted increase of more than 50% on the previous year’s figures.

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With anime titles appearing in top ten lists in almost 100 countries so far this year, the streaming giant has revealed its intentions to expand its anime content by recently signing new production deals with Anima & Company, Science SARU, and MAPPA from Japan, together with Studio Mir in Korea. On the back of these new partnerships, Netflix has announced five new original anime projects to join the 11 other projects that are already in various stages of development.

The latest wave of anime projects includes Rilakkuma’s Theme Park Adventure, a stop motion series directed by Kobayashi Masahito; Thermae Romae Novae, a new adaptation of the popular manga by Yamazaki Mari; High-Rise Invasion, a survival story based on the manga by Miura Tsuina and Takahiro Oba; Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan, a four-episode series based on a story by Hirohiko Araki; and The Way of the Househusband, a new series spun from the award-winning manga by Kousuke Oono.

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Netflix has been investing in original anime programming since 2017, allocating significant portions of their content budget to work with high-profile studios like Production I.G in a bid to “be the most compelling and attractive home for anime fans, creators and production studios.” In 2020, it has pushed this commitment further by partnering with even more influential creators to produce new shows under the Netflix Originals banner.

With dozens of new shows each season and a robust back catalogue that’s yet to be fully explored, anime has quickly become one of the streaming market’s most popular content categories. For more on the ever-changing streaming landscape, read all about why we think anime is the next streaming frontier and what this could mean for the future of these services. Also, be sure to check out our picks for the five best new anime of 2020 so far. 

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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

PS5: As Many Pre-Orders Made in 12 Hours as PS4 Pre-Orders in 12 Weeks in US

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan says PlayStation 5 demand appears to be “very considerable” based on the number of pre-orders in the United States.

Ryan spoke to Reuters about the consumer demand for the PS5 on October 27 and said: “The demand as expressed by the level of pre-order has been very, very considerable.” Ryan said that Sony pre-sold as many PS5s in the first 12 hours of preorders in the United States as were sold in the first 12 weeks of preorders for the PlayStation 4.

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While Ryan wouldn’t talk any specific numbers as it relates to PS5 preorders, one can infer that the number must be quite high. Exact PS4 preorder numbers aren’t known but we know it surpassed 1 million pre-orders worldwide by July 2013, which is four months before the console’s launch, and over 1 million PS4s were sold within the console’s first 24 hours after launch. If the PS5’s pre-order numbers in the first 12 hours match the first 12 weeks of PS4 pre-orders, we wouldn’t be surprised if the PS5 pre-order number is nearing or past 1 million in the US.

Ryan said that it may end up that not everybody who wants to purchase a PS5 on launch day will be able to actually find one to purchase. There will be, however, more PS5s at launch than there were PS4s at launch, according to Sony. He said Sony is “working as hard as we ever can” to get PS5s on store shelves for holiday shopping near the end of the year.

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The SIE CEO also told Reuters that it will continue to grow its staple of first-party studios organically and that Sony will add to its lineup “where we can bolster our in-house capability with selective M&A (merging and acquisition) that might be possible.”

Ryan said all of this the same day that initial previews went up for the PS5 and you can check out IGN’s PS5 coverage of that here. Read about our PS5 unboxing experience and then watch us unbox the PS5 DualSense controller and all of the other PS5 accessories. Check out our hands-on preview with Astro’s Playroom after that to find out why we think the DualSense is a fun evolution of the PlayStation controller.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes. 

Xbox Is Crushing It Right Now Ahead Of Series X/S Launch

Xbox is doing great heading into the launch of the Xbox Series X and S consoles in November. Microsoft announced its earnings for the July-September period, and Xbox was a bright spot.

Gaming revenue rose year-over-year by $550 million, or 22 percent, due in part to increased spending on games and services. The content and services department of Xbox specifically saw its revenue rise by 30 percent, which works out to a whopping $649 million increase.

This growth was driven in part by third-party games, Microsoft said, though it did not mention any by name. As a platform-holder, Microsoft gets a 30% cut of every game sold on Xbox, and with games overall flourishing right now during COVID-19, Microsoft is making big profits. The growth was also fueled by an increase in Xbox Game Pass subscriptions, along with first-party game sales.

It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, however, as Xbox hardware sales dropped by 27 percent due to fewer systems being sold. That makes sense given that the Xbox One is many years into its lifecycle and the Xbox Series X and S consoles are right around the corner, so people may be holding off on purchasing a new Xbox right now.

Xbox is just one division of Microsoft, of course. Overall, Microsoft is crushing it right now, with the company posting revenue of $37.2 billion (+12 percent) for the period and a profit of $13.9 billion (+30 percent).

Microsoft recently dug into its bank account to pay $7.5 billion to acquire ZeniMax and its subsidiary Bethesda. The deal hasn’t officially gone through yet, which is why Phil Spencer is limited in what he can say about the acquisition.

The Xbox Series X and S consoles will launch on November 10, priced at $500 and $300 respectively.

For its part, Sony will also report its latest quarterly earnings this week, so it won’t be long until we find out more about how PlayStation is faring in the lead-up to the PS5 launch in November.

Black Widow Star Is the Source of Gamma Radiation in the Milky Way

The MCU got it all wrong: Black Widow is the source of the Hulk’s gamma-induced transformation, not anger. (This is a joke.)

While that might not be true in comics or on the silver screen, that’s the case in space where scientists recently discovered the culprit behind mysterious gamma radiation in the Milky Way to be that of a Black Widow star, as reported by Science Alert. This source of radiation has been tracked since as far back as 1999, but scientists who determined the gamma rays were coming from a binary system that simply could not find the second star in the equation. The answer has now been found and it turns out the binary system is a Black Widow system, as reported by Science Alert and according to a scientific journal published on October 22.

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“In binary systems like the one we have now discovered, pulsars are known as ‘black widows’ because, like spiders of the same name, they eat their partners, so to speak,” Colin Clark, astronomer at Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester said.

While the black widow answer might sound simple, it was anything but and that’s due to how difficult it was to actually detect the black widow star. Scientists searched through gamma radiation data from the years 2008 to 2018 and used that data to pin down the location of the black widow star.

“The binary star system and the neutron star at its heart, now known as PSR J1653-0158, set new records,” Lars Nieder, Albert Einstein Institute Hannover astronomer said. “We have discovered the galactic dance of a super heavyweight with a flyweight: At slightly more than twice the mass of our Sun, the neutron star is extraordinarily heavy. Its companion has about six times the density of lead, but only about 1 percent the mass of our Sun.”

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Knowing how small the black widow star was compared to its larger companion star in the binary system, it’s easy to see the difficulty in finding this unique black widow star. Scientists said this heavyweight-flyweight duo orbited every 75 minutes, which is faster than all other known similar binary systems. Scientists believed that the system they were looking for would have been produced by a gamma-ray pulsar and things heated up when in 2014, x-rays and other observations of the gamma radiation source led to an answer: a variable star with a 75-minute period.

So scientists had discovered the smaller companion star but they couldn’t find the larger neutron star at this point. The neutron star was thought to have been a pulsar star, which is a rapidly-rotating neutron star that beams radiation to and fro from its poles as it spins. From an observer’s point of view, those beams, which are rotating due to the star’s rotation, would appear like that of the spinning light found at the top of a lighthouse.

Scientists looked into decades of gamma radiation collected by the Large Area Telescope of NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Two weeks of research led to the discovery of the pulsar star they were looking to find. This pulsar rotates extremely fast, more than 500 times a second. In fact, this polar is one of the fastest rotating pulsars ever seen. It’s also in the bottom three for weakest magnetic fields ever detected in a pulsar star.

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Scientists believe this pulsar star cannibalized its smaller, black widow, companion star that we mentioned earlier, leaving behind a remnant of what is thought to be a helium white dwarf star.

“The remnant of a dwarf star orbits the pulsar at just 1.3 times the Earth-Moon distance in only 75 minutes at a speed of more than 700 kilometers per second,” Nieder said. “This unusual duo might have originated from an extremely close binary system, in which matter originally flowed from the companion star onto the neutron star, increasing its mass and causing it to rotate faster and faster while simultaneously dampening its magnetic field.”

Basically, the smaller Black Widow star’s matter continuously flowed to the larger neutron star while the two rotated through space together and the neutron star’s mass grew as a result. Over time, the system became what it is today: a giant neutron star with a mass twice as large as our Sun’s and a much smaller, Black Widow star that’s about 1% the mass of our Sun.

Maybe we’ll learn more about this in Phase 4 of the MCU. In the meantime, catch up on some other space news like this story about possible signs of life detected on Venus and this story about the discovery of 139 new minor planets at the edge of our solar system. Read about how the moon is rusting after that and then read about this parallel universe discovered by scientists where time runs backward.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes. 

The Division 2 Update Ends The Last Resort Event, Full Patch Notes Outlined

The Division 2 servers are back online on PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One following a three-hour maintenance period. In that downtime, developer Massive Entertainment deployed a new update that wraps up the Last Resort event. The full patch notes are outlined below.

The Last Resort was a limited-time event that included 29 pieces of unlockable apparel like shirts and pants for The Division 2 players. It was available to all players who own the Warlords of New York expansion and have completed the New York campaign. The update concludes the Last Resort event and makes all those cosmetics purchasable with premium credits.

The update also addresses some gameplay issues. This includes ironing out Delta-01 errors when loading certain characters and fixing suicide drones that wouldn’t target player skills.

Finally, the patch makes the Legacy cache available with a rotating selection of apparel.

Full The Division 2 Patch Notes

  • Fixed an issue where players received a Delta-01 error when loading certain characters.
  • Fixed an issue causing suicide drones to not target player skills.
  • Last Resort apparel event is now closed and will no longer be available.
  • Last Resort apparel items are available for purchase with Premium Credits.
  • The Legacy cache will become available with a rotating selection of apparel.

The Division 2 received a separate update that decreases the time-to-kill in PvP and gives players a better chance at receiving targeted loot. Title Update 11 also revamps The Summit, a mode that challenges players with ascending to the top of a 100-story Manhattan skyscraper.

The Division 2 will be available on Xbox Series S / Series X and PlayStation 5 via backwards compatibility. While there won’t be a dedicated next-gen port, backwards compatibility will allow next-gen and current-gen consoles to play together thanks to cross-gen support.

Now Playing: Top New Games Releasing On Switch, PS4, Xbox One, And PC This Week — October 25-31, 2020

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Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter Account Reckoning With Its Old Tweets After Delay

Cyberpunk 2077 has been delayed again and will now be released on December 10. Although the latest delay marks the third time CD Projekt Red’s ambitious cyberpunk RPG is pushed back, this latest delay caught many off-guard, particularly because the November 19 date seemed — until today — fairly ironclad.

The official Cyberpunk 2077’s Twitter account has been firm on the November release date for some time and based on tweets as recent as yesterday, the upcoming RPG seemed all set to hit the November 17 release date.

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Unfortunately, the existence of that tweet has become fodder for those disappointed by the latest delay news. And the official Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account now has to contend with the responses.

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“Would anyone notice if we delete this real quick?” the Cyberpunk Twitter account asked in response to another one of their tweets, this time from October 6 that says “No more delays are happening.”

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Now, the social media team is putting out fires by responding to people on social media – sometimes with jokes, sometimes in earnest – about why they couldn’t alert people earlier about the delay.

“Of course we are [gutted]. This sucks – who enjoys letting fans & community down,” the Cyberpunk Twitter account responded after someone said the social media team seems as disappointed by the news as the community.

“Yo socials guy how has your day been?” asked one Twitter user following the delay news.

“It was fine until up an hour ago,” the Cyberpunk team responded.

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The numerous delays have also allowed some on the dev team to poke fun at themselves. One of the quest designers on Cyberpunk 2077, Patrick K. Mills, tweeted, “Even I’m starting to think the game isn’t real, and I’m playing it right now.”

It has been reported that the Cyberpunk 2077 dev team may have found out about the latest delay last-minute. Jason Schreier tweeted, “All of them found out at the same time we did – CDPR sent an internal email simultaneously with the public tweet.” This could explain why the Twitter account was confirming the November release date as recently as last night.

Ultimately, the social media team at CDPR is keeping a stiff upper lip, especially since they have to deal with past tweets affirming there’d be no more delays. “We have a very nice community, a great social media team and you can’t tweet pics of futuristic cars or bad puns all day. In the end we’re still one company.”

You can read IGN’s Cyberpunk 2077 hands-on preview here.

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Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN.