Bloodshot Movie Gets Digital Release 11 Days After Premiere

Considering that state governments are asking people to not gather in large crowds because of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, movie studios are releasing movies a whole lot earlier to the digital market, considering no one can or should go to the theater right now. The latest movie to arrive early is the superhero movie Bloodshot.

The film, which is in theaters now, will have a digital release on Tuesday, March 24 through various retailers like Movies Anywhere, Google Play, Vudu, and iTunes. Bloodshot only just arrived in theaters on March 13.

“Sony Pictures is firmly committed to theatrical exhibition and we support windowing,” Sony Pictures chairman Tom Rothman said in a statement (via The Hollywood Reporter). “This is a unique and exceedingly rare circumstance where theaters have been required to close nationwide for the greater good and Bloodshot is abruptly unavailable in any medium. Audiences will now have the chance to own Bloodshot right away and see it at home, where we are all spending more time. We are confident that–like other businesses hit hard by the virus–movie theaters will bounce back strongly, and we will be there to support them.”

Sony isn’t the first to do this. Recently, Universal Pictures announced that movies like The Hunt, The Invisible Man, and upcoming Trolls: World Tour will be available for rent throughout their original theatrical run. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker released a few days early on digital–it’s still being released on Blu-ray and DVD on March 31. Also arriving on March 24, along with Bloodshot, is Birds of Prey, only a month and a half after its theatrical release.

In GameSpot’s review of Bloodshot, Michael Rougeau said, “If Vin Diesel and a goofy sci-fi/superhero mash-up premise are enough to get your nanites pumping, then by all means, enjoy. Otherwise, Bloodshot will simply leave you cold.”

Now Playing: Vin Diesel On What Sets Bloodshot Apart From Other Comic Book Movies

Evo 2020 Is Not Canceled Yet, Monitoring Coronavirus

The massive fighting game tournament Evo Championship Series (Evo) is scheduled to begin this July, and despite the ongoing threat of coronavirus, its organizers are not cancelling yet.

In a post on Twitter, Evo organizers said they are monitoring the outbreak and are monitoring updates from local agencies as well as the World Health Organization and Center for Disease Control to best assess the situation. As of now, the Mandalay Bay Resort where Evo was scheduled to be held has closed, and Evo’s organizers are assuming it will be open by the July 31 start date.

Planned game tournaments for Evo 2020 include Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Street Fighter V: Champion Edition, Granblue Fantasy Versus, Samurai Shodown, Tekken 7, Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r], and SoulCalibur VI. Last year’s Mortal Kombat 11 is not included.

Should Evo 2020 be canceled, ticket purchases will be refunded. Those who have purchased plane tickets to attend could be out of luck, particularly if organizers wait much longer before making a final decision on the event.

Alongside movie and entertainment delays, several other major gaming conventions and events have already been canceled, including E3 2020. It was scheduled for one month before Evo 2020. Though game announcements can be moved to digital presentations in the case of E3 2020, there isn’t really an online-only option for Evo 2020. Latency and accuracy play a large role in competitive fighting games, and any lag would compromise the integrity of results.

Now Playing: Street FIghter 5 – Champion Edition Launch Trailer

Cats Is Available to Rent and People Are Losing It

Seth Rogen got stoned and live-tweeted his first viewing of Cats, which is now available on digital, and his tweets have taken the social media landscape by storm.

While Rogen isn’t the first celeb to drag Cats on social media — Westworld’s Evan Rachel Wood dissed the film when it opened theatrically in December –the actor/producer’s incredulous, absurd reactions to the widely maligned box office bomb turned out to be just the thing we didn’t know we needed right now. Behold, in all its glory, the full thread:

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While Rogen’s stoned live-tweeting of Cats became an immediate sensation, some on social want to see the Cats crew give Rogen a taste of his own medicine:

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But Seth Rogen’s Cats tweets weren’t the only observations during the film’s digital release to shake Twitter to its core. Filmmaker Ben Mekler’s tweets about Cats prompted screenwriter Jack Waz (Hulu’s Howard the Duck) to make a startling claim about the film’s initial visual effects (which were incomplete when the movie opened in December and prompted Universal to re-release it with “improved visual effects“).

Waz alleges that he was told by a visual effects colleague that the anthropomorphic cats originally had exposed anuses — yes, you read that right — that were then digitally removed shortly before the film’s December theatrical release. Universal had not responded to IGN’s request for comment on these alleged buttholes at time of publish, but no need to fear, we’re on the case.

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UPDATE: Melker has now posted the following exchange he had with a VFX artist who claims to have worked on Cats, who wanted to clarify the existence of these digitally removed buttholes:

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Waz’s claim has since gone viral and spurred on demands to Release the Butthole Cut, a clear reference to the infamous Snyder Cut of Justice League:

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Even Seth Rogen joined the chorus calling for it:

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But not everyone watching Cats on digital was perplexed for the same reasons as Rogen or were clamoring for the Butthole Cut. Some viewers just couldn’t get past the overall design of the humanoid cats themselves.
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IGN wasn’t a fan of Cats, scoring it 4.5 out of 10 in our review of the theatrical release. However,, our review did cite the film’s camp value and ludicrous turns by Judi Dench and Idris Elba as factors that “makes it ripe for ironic viewings.” Clearly it is getting a new life on digital, but the movie is already reaching cult status: the Alamo Drafthouse, until recently, was still doing Rowdy Screenings of the film.

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Have you seen Cats? Will you watch it now that’s it’s on digital? Let us know in the comments!

Cloud Saves In Animal Crossing: New Horizons Aren’t Supported, Here’s Why

Back at E3 2019, Nintendo revealed that Animal Crossing: New Horizons will be one of the few Switch games not to support Nintendo Switch Online’s cloud save function. According to the company, the reason for this is to prevent players from cheating, and now director Aya Kyogoku has elaborated further on the impact it would have had on the game.

Speaking to IGN, Kyogoku explained that New Horizons does not support cloud saves because players could exploit that feature to multiply their bells or items. “It messes with the economy of Animal Crossing by getting the items or bells as much as they want,” Kyogoku explained.

While New Horizons does not support cloud saves, Nintendo will give players some way to recover their data in certain instances. Nintendo Switch Online subscribers will be able to recover their save data from the server should their Nintendo Switch become lost or damaged. During last month’s Animal Crossing-focused Direct, a disclaimer said data could only be recovered one time, but that caveat has since been removed from the video, so it’s unclear if there will be a limit.

New Horizons also does not allow players to transfer their save data to another Switch console. According to producer Hisashi Nogami, this restriction isn’t to prevent players from cheating, but rather a consequence of the Switch’s hardware. However, a method to transfer your save data is in the works.

“In terms of data transfer and moving, this has nothing to do with cheating,” Nogami said. “Switch hardware and Switch’s systems have restrictions when transferring special data like Animal Crossing data because it’s a little bit complex. In order to address those concerns, we are trying to create a transfer system that’s special to Animal Crossing.”

Animal Crossing: New Horizons launches at 12 AM ET on March 20, and the game is getting an update before it even releases. You can read our thoughts on the life sim in our Animal Crossing: New Horizons review-in-progress. You can also see what pre-order bonuses are available in our New Horizons pre-order guide.

Now Playing: Animal Crossing: New Horizons Early Review Impressions

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Best Movies, TV, And Games For Social Distancing

The novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, has changed a lot in the past couple of months. In addition to the obvious impact it’s had on the general population, the numerous casualties, and the overwhelming pressure it’s placed on healthcare workers, the coronavirus has also hit the game industry and the entertainment industry in unprecedented ways.

Major conferences like E3 have been canceled or postponed, things are getting delayed, and offices worldwide are asking employees to work from home. Now with the rise in shelter-in-place orders and many parts of the United States closing down “non-essential” businesses like restaurants, clubs, and other social venues, there are even more people stuck at home without a clear indication of how long this will all last.

Screenshot from Kind Words (lo fi chill beats to write to), available on Steam and itch.io.
Screenshot from Kind Words (lo fi chill beats to write to), available on Steam and itch.io.

While those lucky enough to be able to telecommute might be able to keep busy most of the day, people currently out of work, stuck homeschooling or being homeschooled, or self-isolating for health reasons now suddenly have a lot of time to occupy. Escapism isn’t always the best medicine, but it can be a temporary relief from the uncertainty of our current situation.

Below we’ve rounded up some of our favorite movies, shows, and games to keep you entertained while practicing social distancing or self-quarantining. We hope they serve as a much-needed distraction and bring you some joy during all of this. Stay safe!

The Best Games To Play While You’re Stuck At Home

Sometimes the best thing to do when you’re stressed is unwind with a great game. Our best games to play while stuck inside list includes some of our favorite relaxing RPGs like Stardew Valley and Dragon Quest, meditative puzzlers like Tetris Effect, and more.

All The Free Games You Can Claim Right Now

There are tons of great games available to claim for free right now across multiple platforms, including PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Mobile games are great for passing the time too. Here are all the games you can claim for free right now.

The Best Games To Play With Friends Online

Sometimes the game matters less than the people you’re playing with. If you’re looking for a way to chill out with friends even while you’re stuck at home, check out one of our favorite games to play with friends online.

The Best Blu-Ray Deals

Delivery workers are still out there bringing the rest of us food, groceries, medicine, and (right or wrong) non-essential garbage to keep us busy. If you’re stocking up on important stuff (but a normal amount, please), why not throw something nice in to keep you busy? Amazon and Best Buy currently have a ton of really good deals on Blu-rays: movie collections for major franchises like Jurassic Park and Fast & Furious, popular TV shows like Chernobyl and Rick & Morty, and more.

Watch Netflix With Your Friends

Sometimes it isn’t about having a particular movie in mind, but just being able to spend time with your friends when many cities are ordering social distancing measures for public health reasons. A new Google Chrome extension called Netflix Party lets you sync movies up with your friends and adds a chat box on the side.

Catch A Movie In Theaters… At Home

Universal will be putting some of its theatrical releases up for on-demand viewing in the comfort of your home, as soon as Friday, March 20. That means you’ll be able to watch new theatrical releases at home.

Movies To Fight Cabin Fever

This assortment of cabin fever-fighting films are hand-picked by our editors and are sure to bring some much-needed lighthearted energy into your home. They include nostalgic classics and a more modern one, but all are perfect for a cozy rewatch.

New On Netflix This Month

Netflix got a ton of new movies and shows this month and there’s still more coming.

New On Hulu This Month

If you have Hulu, you can expect new movies, TV, and anime this month that you won’t want to miss. A ton of new binge-worthy TV shows are also coming in April. You might also want to check what’s leaving in April so you know what to watch before the month is up.

New On Amazon This Month

Amazon Prime added a bunch of new movies at the start of the month, with just a small handful dropping through the end of the month still.

New On Disney Plus This Month

Disney Plus added a few new movies this month, including Black Panther. Star Wars: The Clone Wars is still ongoing as well. April has quite a few new movies and originals in store, including some National Geographic specials to celebrate Earth Month.

Temtem Early Access Review

The question at the top of nearly every prospective Temtem player’s mind is, of course, “Is this just a Pokémon MMO?” After spending more than 30 hours roaming this monster-filled archipelago, my answer is “no.” While it clearly borrows quite a bit from Pokémon, Temtem improves upon the creature collecting formula and builds a unique world that makes it an awesome adventure in its own right.

Don’t get me wrong: Temtem draws so much inspiration from Pokémon that it’s impossible not to notice similarities even if you only have a passing familiarity with the creature-collecting genre, and at times that can make it feel like a knockoff. You spend most of your time taming cartoonish animal-inspired monsters and leveling them up through battle which causes them to evolve into new, more powerful Temtem (which are, of course, what these monsters are called). Along the way you work with a professor who gives you your first monster friend, fight against an evil organization that wants to exploit Temtem, and there’s even a dopey rival who always seems to show up at the worst time to challenge you to a battle. Practically every trope and basic building block you know from Pokémon is accounted for in Temtem and for those looking to dismiss it as a shameless ripoff there’s quite a bit of copycatting to point to.

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But Temtem sets itself apart and is immediately enticing in its own right through all the ways it drastically improves upon things that have bothered me about Pokémon for since I became a fan of in 1998. Sick of having to delete old moves to make way for new ones? While Temtem honors the tradition of only allowing you to equip four at a time, it lets you slot any abilities your Temtem has learned whenever you want so your Temtem have more flexibility from battle-to-battle. Wish Pokémon had more to do aside from the main campaign? Temtem has a robust library of sidequests. It’s clear that developer Crema thought long and hard about what its team’s dream version of Pokémon would look like and set out to create it – and so far it’s paying off.

One of Temtem’s best original ideas is the stamina meter. Instead of a finite number of times each ability can be used before having to heal your squad, Temtem introduces a stat which decreases as abilities are used and increases in between rounds or when Temtem use their turn to rest. More powerful moves require more stamina, which adds some strategy into which abilities you use and when. If you run out of stamina, any further attacks you make eat into your Temtem’s health bar and disable them for one turn until they’ve had a chance to rest. Running out of stamina can be irritating at times and means that you likely won’t get to use your most powerful attacks far less often than a Pokemon player normally would, but the tradeoff is a system that feels better balanced and isn’t just a matter of using your best attacks to knock out the opposing team with a single move. And all Temtem refill their stamina meters at the end of each combat encounter, meaning you never have to turn back and heal up to keep using your favorite attacks.

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The way stamina plays into combat can be hard to wrap your head around at first, but it’s absolutely awesome once mastered and can turn the tables if used well. Late in my playthrough, I challenged a stranger to a multiplayer match and found, to my surprise, they had a much stronger team. He hit me with his best attacks right away and did some serious damage, but as the match drew on, his Temtem became exhausted. They took damage from over-extending themselves and had to rest while I pressed my attack. Finally, I was able to win the match by the slimmest of margins. I felt like Muhammad Ali doing the rope-a-dope until my opponent wore himself out, then striking back at the perfect moment. That’s a level of strategy and depth that I’ve simply never experienced in all my years of trying to be the very best that no one ever was.

All combat in Temtem is 2v2 (unless one or both trainers have only one playable Temtem), which speeds up combat and allows for different Temtem duos to synergize with one another for maximum devastation. For example, a crystal-type Temtem using the Crystal Dust attack will deal additional damage and act sooner when fighting with a wind-type Temtem at their side. Sometimes synergy modifiers completely change the nature of the move, like by poisoning the enemy in addition to the standard effects of the attack. Having two Temtem on the battlefield for every match also improves the usefulness of moves that affect everyone on the battlefield – a feature that’s sparsely used in the series that inspired it. And because you can do damage with one of your fighters and use the other for buffs or debuffs, I foundmyself making use of non-damage-dealing abilities far more often than I do in Pokemon. Abilities that restore stamina, for example, are particularly useful because they can keep the powerful attacks coming for longer.

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Beyond those mechanical changes, probably the biggest way in which Temtem differs from its inspiration is in the fact that it’s 100% online. That’s awesome in all the ways you’d hope…and less awesome in all the ways you’d fear. It’s great that you can see other players and their Temtem running around the map and interact with them in a number or ways, including challenging them to a battle, trading Temtem and items, or asking them to join you in co-op. Battling and trading are exactly what you’d expect, but co-op in particular is an awesome addition worthy of high praise. By teaming up with a fellow trainer, you’re free to travel together, complete missions and, of course, battle. Since all combat is 2v2, adventuring with a friend feels like something Temtem was built for rather than a tacked-on feature.

On the other hand, with an online ecosystem – particularly one that’s still in early access and will be for the foreseeable future – comes disconnects, service outages, choppy performance when the connection dips, and more. It’s nothing rampant or experience-ruining, but it’s undoubtedly there and players who demand the stability of a largely offline experience to the social benefits of an MMO aren’t going to be happy about it. Still, the fact that it’s online makes the world of Temtem feel alive and populated with tons of trainers sporting badass creatures you didn’t know even existed, and that’s well worth the trade-off.

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Another side effect of the MMO model is that losing battles becomes canon, given that there’s no way to quit and reload to erase a failure. As much as it pains me to admit, I didn’t win every match that I fought and some of those losses impacted the story. While it hurts my perfectionist heart to lose a match and have to live with it, it’s really interesting to suffer a defeat at the hands of one of the story’s villains and have them smugly walk away, leaving me with a bitter, unfamiliar taste in my mouth.

The world of Temtem is expertly built and filled with entertaining characters, even when the campaign’s story proves somewhat generic and uninteresting. Set in the floating islands known as the Airborne Archipelago, you’ll encounter a wide variety of unique areas, from volcanic craters to poisonous, lawless wildernesses. Each one is filled with interesting characters that often pull you into cheeky banter before offering a sidequest or challenging you to a Temtem duel. Absolutely everyone has something to say and pre-combat conversation can go on for quite a while in many cases – some of those include multiple dialogue options, though you can usually select one that jumps straight to the fight if you’re not there to chat. Characters are so well-written that I rarely noticed their often low-detail character models and faces, which stand out when compared to the elaborate Temtem themselves. From an enigmatic and silly detective to a smug and sinister countess, characters are wacky, memorable, and make goofy sounds in lieu of spoken dialogue.

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With such a strong cast of characters, it’s frankly bizarre that the story (so far) seems not to go anywhere. While there are strong sections, like when you get stranded in the wilderness and have to fight for survival, or escape prison and have to make do with a whole new set of Temtem after being separated from your own, each section feels very much like a self-contained story with no real repercussions or larger direction. And because Temtem is a work-in-progress, the story actually…doesn’t have an ending just yet. Partway through your journey you find someone blocking your path and a message pops up to tell you that more is coming soon, and that’s that. It’s to be expected in this circumstance, but I couldn’t help being a little disappointed.

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That’s not the only reminder that Temtem isn’t complete. You’ll note that some Temtem simply can’t be acquired, find doors all over the place that have “WIP” (work in-progress) signs on them, and hit an arbitrary level cap of 48 late in your adventuring.

Another thing I hope Crema works on during early access is that while the Airborne Archipelago is a lot of fun to explore, the creatures you encounter are often less exciting. Simply put, there just aren’t enough Temtem out there, which is one of the ways in which Pokémon’s decades of creatures give it an incredible advantage. Even if the Temtem are well-designed (and most are), you can only see the same handful of creatures pop up in the wild so many times before you’re bored to tears. Worse, each area only has a handful of unique Temtem, which makes battling through the wilds a bit of a slog. It’s only marginally better in duels, where the most powerful Temtem tend to show up quite a bit.

PS5 & Xbox Series X: Teraflops Aren’t The Only Measure of Power

Sony has finally given us a deep dive into the specs of its upcoming PlayStation 5, and while the talk was mostly aimed at developers with super in-depth explanations around SSD, GPU, and audio design, gamers are already abuzz with speculations about how performance between the PlayStation 5 and Xbox’s Series X consoles might compare.

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In particular, everyone’s wondering about that teraflop number: at 10.28 teraflops, is the PS5 going to be a noticeable downgrade from the Xbox Series X’s 12 teraflops? Let’s break it down.

FLOPs stands for floating point operations per second, and it’s a basic measure of the GPUs ability to perform the types of calculations it needs when rendering a scene. Computers today are powerful enough that we measure this ability in teraflops, or trillions of FLOPS. But teraflops aren’t the end-all-be-all of performance. A teraflop from one graphics chip isn’t always comparable to a teraflop from another—AMD’s RDNA GPUs, for example, produces better performance per teraflop than its previous GCN-based GPUs. The same goes for comparing NVIDIA to AMD. So you can’t really compare the performance of two chips based on that single number alone.

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If the two GPUs come from the same family—like the PS5 and Xbox Series X’s do, as both are based on AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture—things are slightly more apples to apples, but it’s still not the only indicator of performance. Let’s look at how that teraflop value is calculated: Each GPU has a certain number of compute units (CUs) and a clock speed. When you put those together, you can generate a single number—in teraflops—that makes it a little easier to compare performance, however imperfectly.

So, for the PlayStation 5, that calculation looks like:

36 CUs x 64 shaders per CU x 2.23 GHz x 2 instructions per clock = 10,275 gigaflops, or 10.28 teraflops (when rounded).

The Xbox Series X has a lower clock speed, but more compute units, leading to a higher number of teraflops:

52 CUs x 64 shaders per CU x 1.825 GHz x 2 instructions per clock = 12,147 gigaflops, or 12.1 teraflops (when rounded).

So for that specific measure of computational power, the Xbox Series X comes out ahead by about 18%. But as Cerny said in his talk, teraflops only measures one aspect of a GPU’s performance. The clock speed affects many other parts of the GPU, and he argues that a faster clock speed provides more advantages across the board than a lower clock speed with more compute units (and thus teraflops). We’ll have to hold judgment until we see both consoles in the silicon-flesh.

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After all, we also have to take into account the fact that we don’t know how Microsoft’s performance-balancing features like variable-rate shading will compare to what Sony is offering. Measuring teraflops alone also ignores how the PS5 will downclock its hardware in certain situations, how the two consoles’ SSDs compare, whether the GPU is bottlenecked in a given scene, or how any other components may influence performance.

So don’t get too tied up in the teraflops number just yet. The PS5 may very well be less powerful than the Xbox Series X, but this doesn’t mean it’s going to be exactly 18% slower when playing actual games—we need to wait for benchmarks until we can truly see how the two consoles stack up. Not to mention how exclusive games, form factor, or price may tip the scales of the overall picture.

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New to the IGN Store: Star Wars: The Clone Wars Designs

Another week, another new selection of designs now part of the IGN Store. We just added over 400 Star Wars: The Clone Wars t-shirts and pullovers, expanding on our already massive selection of officially licensed Star Wars designs.

New Star Wars: The Clone Wars Shirts

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That’s just a tiny fraction of the available designs for you to check out.

On top of the new Star Wars: The Clone Wars designs, we have a massive collection of Marvel shirts and pullovers from X-MenAvengers, and tons more, as well as designs from some of the biggest Nintendo properties around, all officially licensed, and all waiting for you. MetroidMario KartSplatoon, even newcomers like Luigi’s Mansion 3 and Animal Crossing: New Horizons are part of the IGN Store.

Be sure to check back each week as we add even more designs, and follow the IGN Store on Twitter for announcements and special savings.

PSA: Xbox Series X Release Date Is Not Thanksgiving

The Xbox Series X was listed for a Thanksgiving 2020 release date, but Microsoft tells IGN that the system is still on track for Holiday 2020.

An update to the official Xbox Series X website for the UK, India, and Australia listed that the Series X was now coming out in Thanksgiving 2020, up from its holiday 2020 release window.

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Microsoft has issued a slight denial and reaffirmed the holiday release window.

“Xbox Series X will be available Holiday 2020 alongside Halo Infinite,” said a Microsoft representative to IGN when we reached out for a statement.

Geoff Keighley also tweeted that, according to his sources, the Xbox Series X release date is unchanged and that there will be no announcement today about the release date.

An additional statement from another Microsoft spokesperson further clarified that “An Xbox product page in some regions inaccurately listed the launch date for the Xbox Series X as Thanksgiving 2020. We are committed to launching Holiday 2020.”

A Thanksgiving release date is much more specific than Holiday 2020, but it sounds like Xbox is not yet willing to narrow that release window and lock down the Series X release date.

Microsoft did reveal the full Xbox Series X specs earlier this week, which was later followed by Sony revealing the PS5 specs. While we’re starting to learn more and more about the next-gen consoles, a release date for both the Series X and PS5 remains unannounced.

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Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN.

Steam’s Spring Game Festival Features Over 40 Playable Demos Until March 23rd

If you’re looking for something to do while you’re holed up in your home practicing social distancing, head over to Steam right now for the Spring Game Festival. There are currently over 40 playable indie game demos that were to be featured at the 2020 Game Developers Conference, which was previously postponed due to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

This is the second Game Festival featured on Steam, with the previous one taking place during last year’s Game Awards. The titles included this time around would have been featured at the Indie MEGABOOTH, Day of the Devs, and The MIX during this year’s GDC, which is now being hosted virtually.

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Currently, the demos available are:

  • We should talk.
  • Sons of Ra
  • Backworlds
  • Quench
  • Going Under
  • Superlivinal
  • Mystic Pillars
  • Evan’s Remains
  • Tunche
  • Duster
  • We Are The Caretakers
  • HyperParasite
  • Neon Noodles
  • Hundred Days
  • Filament
  • Later Daters
  • Pushy and Pully in Blockland
  • Lord Winklebottom Investigates
  • Heavenly Bodies
  • Chicory: A Colorful Tale
  • Spiritfarer
  • Curious Expedition 2
  • Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl
  • Aeolis Tournament
  • Operencia: The Stolen Sun
  • Neverinth
  • Divisadero
  • Liberated
  • Jack Axe
  • Mighty Fight Federation
  • Röki
  • She Dreams Elsewhere
  • When The Past Was Around
  • Embr
  • Hazel Sky
  • Recompile
  • Vigil: The Longest Night
  • Rising Hell
  • Haven
  • Raji: An Ancient Epic
  • A Space For The Unbound
  • Eldest Souls
  • Coffee Talk
  • Garden Story
  • KungFu Kickball
  • Retrograde Arena
  • Moncage
  • EleMentals: Death Metal Death Match!
  • Klang 2

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Some of these titles are available to purchase immediately, while others won’t be out until a later date. So, if there’s something you enjoy, make sure to add it to your Steam wishlist! The Spring Game Festival is available for a limited time from March 18th at 10 AM PST to March 23rd at 10 AM PST.

This is just one of the many changes we’ve seen in response the the COVID-19 pandemic with many companies having to change the way they make content available. For example, Universal recently announced that it will be distributing current theatrical releases on demand starting March 20th. We’re keeping a close eye on everything impacted, including all movies and tv shows delayed due to the outbreak, and will continue updating you with any additional ways this impacts our society.

We’ve also created a handy guide that explains how to help, and stay safe, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Matthew Adler is a News and Features writer for IGN who is furiously trying to get through his backlog of games and movies while he’s stuck at home. You can keep him company on Twitter or watch him stream on Twitch.