Call Of Duty: Warzone Includes PS4-Exclusive Content

Call of Duty’s newest battle royale, Warzone, is launching this week on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Those who play on PS4 are getting a special treat that no one else is getting.

PlayStation announced on its blog that PlayStation Plus subscribers will receive a free “Call of Duty: Warzone Combat Pack” from the PlayStation Store. That’s all PlayStation had to say on the matter, but the company added that more information will be available when Warzone launches.

This content, whatever it is, will be exclusive for PS4 until October 1, 2020.

This is not the first timed exclusive Call of Duty content. Modern Warfare’s Season 2 update included some PS4-exclusive DLC, while the Survival mode for Spec-Ops is also exclusive to PS4 until October 1, 2020.

Warzone is a standalone free-to-play battle royale game for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. It’s also included with Modern Warfare for those who already bought the game.

For lots more on Warzone, check out GameSpot’s rundown of everything you need to know in the video above. You can also check out a full match of gameplay and find out what happens when you win.

Now Playing: Call Of Duty: Warzone – Everything You Need To Know In Under 4 Minutes

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Deals: Super Mario Maker 2, Super Mario Party, and Yoshi’s Crafted World $39.99 Each

Today’s spotlight deal is the Happy Mario Day Event that runs now through Saturday. Score 33% off some excellent first party titles for the Nintendo Switch, including the highly acclaimed Mario Maker 2 game. For those of you who don’t yet own the Switch, you can get a free Mario themed controller with purchase of the newer Switch model with the longer battery life. There are also some great deals on hard drives, LEGO, AirPods, and Vizio 4K TVs.

Super Mario Maker 2 for $39.99

This sale only runs until March 14 (Saturday) so hurry up and get Mario Maker 2 at the lowest price ever. This game is like Super Mario Bros U Deluxe on steroids; you have a complete single player “story mode” as well as the ability to create your own level masterpieces, or download others’ creations. We rated this game an “Amazing” (9.5/10). Seth Macy writes “Super Mario Maker 2 does nearly everything better than its already excellent predecessor, keeping the charm of a Mario game while introducing some incredible new ideas“.

Nintendo Switch V2 with Free PowerA Mario Controller for $298.99

There aren’t very many Nintendo Switch deals right now, but Walmart is throwing in a free controller when you get either the new generation Switch with the longer battery life.

Yoshi’s Crafted World for $39.99

If you’re looking for more polished 2D platforming goodness, give Yoshi’s Crafted World a whirl. This game is the spiritual successor to Yoshi’s Woolly World, starring everyone’s favorite green dinosaur. Whereas Woolly World portrayed a world made out of fabric, Crafted World emulates the cardboard cutout look perfectly.

Super Mario Party for $39.99

This is easily one of the best party games for the Switch with over 80 mini-games to choose from. Up to four players can play at a time, and each person only needs one half of a Joy-Con pair for the full experience (which means you only need two Joy-Con pairs for four people).

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games for $38.99

This is another excellent party game with up to 30 different mini-games all themed on the events that will take place during the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics. Select from a star studded cast that includes both Mario and Sonic characters.

Get the Samsung Galaxy S20 on Visible and Pay $40/Month for Unlimited Data, Messages, and Minutes (Cheaper with Party Pay)

This sponsored deal is brought to you by Visible.

The new Samsung Galaxy S20 and S20+ are available on the Visible network. Purchase either and you’ll receive a $200 Samsung Gift Credit. On top of that, the $40/mo Visible plan gives you unlimited data, text, and phone, but that gets even cheaper if you sign up with more people (Party Pay). With 2 members the price drops to $35/mo, with 3 members it’s $30/mo, and with 4 members it’s $25/mo. Visible is owned and operated by Verizon, so you get access to the best overall network in the country.

Seagate Expansion 8TB USB 3.0 External Desktop Hard Drive for $119.99

2TB, 4TB, or even 6TB too small for you? This massive drive is cheaper than any 8TB hard drive on Black Friday. It’s compatible with the PC, PS4, or Xbox One but unlike one of those small portable drives, you’ll need to plug this into a power outlet as well as a USB port. It’s worth it for all the storage (there’s no such thing as a 8TB portable drive).

LEGO Architecture Skylines: Tokyo 547-Piece Building Kit for $47.99

This LEGO Architecture Skylines set is new for 2020 and it’s already discounted by 20% off. It features buildable models of the Tokyo Tower, Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower, Tokyo Big Sight, TOKYO SKYTREE, Chidorigafuchi Park, and Shibuya Crossing.

Out 6/26: Ghost of Tsushima for PS4

Ghost of Tsushima is coming exclusive to the PS4 console in less than 4 months. The Special Edition includes a steelbook case and some DLC goodies. The Collector’s Edition includes a steelbook case, replica Sakai mask and stand, Sashimono war banner, cloth map of Tsushima, Furoshiki wrapping cloth, 48-page mini art book, and even more DLC extras.

2019 65″ Vizio M658-G1 4K HDR QLED Smart HDTV with Bonus $200 Dell eGift Card for $649.99

The Vizio M-series QLED TVs are one of the best values you can get if you’re looking for a TV that’s fully HDR capable. The new Vizio M-series Quantum TVs utilize the same “Quantum Dot” technology used in Samsung QLED TVs. This particular model is the best M-series TV that Vizio offers: it features a wide color gamut, full-array backlight with 90 local dimming zones and 600 nits of brightness for excellent HDR image quality. Dell gift cards carry a 90-day expiration and can be used on anything at Dell.com.

Apple AirPods Pro for $234.98

The price of the AirPods Pro is back down to what we saw on Black Friday. These AirPods feature built-in active noise cancellation, but despite that that they boast a longer play time on a single charge than the vanilla AirPods. Other features include three sets of silicone tips for customized fit, a sweat and water resistant outer shell, and a wireless charging case that can provide an additional 24 hours of battery life.

Nintendo Switch Video Game Deals:

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Eric Song is IGN’s deal curator and spends 25% of his pay on stuff he posts.

The Mario Movie Is Happening Because Illumination CEO Told Miyamoto About His Failures

The Mario movie currently in the works at Illumination is still a while away, as it’s due to release in 2022. Nintendo has been protective of its characters following 1993’s disastrous live-action Super Mario Bros movie, which was an enormous flop that has since achieved cult status. Now, in a new interview, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto has opened up about why Nintendo has partnered with Illumination (Despicable Me, Minions) for their upcoming animated film.

Shigeru Miyamoto, who is signed on to produce the new movie, spoke to Famitsu about the movie, and a portion of their discussion was translated by Nintendo Everything. In the interview, Miyamoto recalls meeting with Chris Meledandri, the CEO of Illumination. There was one specific thing that made Miyamoto trust the man, and it wasn’t because of the success of their films.

“When we started our partnership with Universal, I heard that the CEO of Illumination, Chris Meledandri, wanted to meet with me,” Miyamoto says. “I didn’t know what kind of angle he was getting at, but I’ll never forget when he talked to me about why he had failed before.”

According to Miyamoto, he started to feel like he could trust Meledandri when he spoke about these failures, and it convinced him that Nintendo could work with Illumination. “That was right around the time I was considering movies, so we decided to have him do the animation for us,” he said.

Asked to expound on the failure Meledandri talked about, Miyamoto simply responded “can’t say,” before laughing.

Nintendo is collaborating with Universal to open a theme park in Tokyo and Orlando. Illumination’s next film is the Despicable Me prequel Minions: The Rise of Gru. No director is officially attached to the Mario movie yet.

Now Playing: Minions: The Rise Of Gru (2020) – Official Trailer

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Elder Scrolls Online Is Getting A Huge Update On Consoles

Get ready for a massive download, Elder Scrolls Online players. The Patching Overhaul in ESO’s Update 25 will change the way the game is downloaded, patched and stored on your console–meaning improvements to game load time and a significant reduction in the amount of space taken up on your hard drive.

The bad news is that this update will require ESO to be completely re-downloaded from scratch. The game’s auto-update will take care of the full process for you, but be prepared for the update to take some time.

Update 25 has already been released for PC and Mac, but will be coming to consoles on March 10–so you may need to load up your console early if you’re planning to play ESO on Tuesday. The file size for the PC version of this update was 64.22GB, so the console download will likely be similarly huge.

As a thank you to everyone for going through the patching process, all players will be able to get the Crimson Torchbug pet for free in the two weeks following the patch. The Torchbug can be found in the Pets category of the Crown Store, and needs to be redeemed before March 24.

Console players look to benefit the most from ESO’s mega update, with smaller patches, more free hard drive space and a host of performance fixes–just in time to add the whopping territory of Skyrim in the game’s next major expansion.

Now Playing: The Evolution Of The Elder Scrolls Online | E3 2019

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Doom 64 Re-Release Will Feature A New Chapter

Doom 64 is returning on March 20 for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC, releasing alongside Doom Eternal. The new version features upscaled graphics, a low price point, and, we’re now learning, all-new content that was not featured in the original Nintendo 64 version.

USGamer is reporting that Nightdive Studios, the team behind the updated port, has added a new chapter to the game. In an interview, senior developer James Haley described the new chapter to the site, saying that it takes place after the Doom 64 story (which is itself set after Doom II). “The Mother Demon you defeated in that outing had a sister, and since you’ve been messing up Hell non-stop, she tries to get rid of you by sending you away,” Haley explains.

“If you can make your way back and take revenge, you’ll be rewarded with a bit of lore that fans of both series, new and classic, should enjoy.”

The classic Doom games have gotten their share of new content recently, including the John Romero developed Sigil expansion for the original. This expansion recently made its way into the console versions of Doom and Doom II.

Elsewhere in the piece, quality assurance lead Leo Mikkola explains that the changed controls make the game “more accessible,” with a lower difficulty curve, but not necessarily easier overall, and that there’s “a distinct reduction of input lag.” It’s also confirmed that the PS4 and Switch versions feature optional motion controls.

March 2020 is going to be a huge month for Doom–here’s why you should be excited about Doom Eternal’s multiplayer.

Now Playing: Doom 64 – Official Announcement Trailer

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Android xCloud Preview Adds Tools To Help Players Discover New Games

Microsoft is continuing to work on its Project xCloud game streaming service, with the preview version now available in four countries. The Android version of the xCloud test, which now boasts well over 50 games in its library, is adding a new feature designed to help players find a new game to play.

Those in the xCloud preview will notice a set of five game trailers next time they open the app. As well as helping players to decide on their next game, xCloud will use the time the trailer is playing to load the game in the background, cutting down wait time if the player decides to jump in and play.

As Project xCloud is still in its beta phase, this new feature and many others in the preview may not make it to the finished app in the same state, or at all. “The Project xCloud preview is all about iterating, getting your input, and continuing to build great experiences,” the update reads.

If you’re in the preview already, the new feature will roll out today. If you want to get onto the preview–and you live in either the US, the UK, Korea or Canada–you can register here. To participate you’ll need a compatible Android device, a Microsoft account, an Xbox One controller with Bluetooth, and an internet connection with 10Mbps downloads.

xCloud is also available on iOS, but with fewer games and features currently available.

Keep an eye out for more Project xCloud news next week, when Microsoft will share its planned GDC announcements over Mixer livestream.

Now Playing: Project xCloud – Official Trailer

What Happens When You Win A Call Of Duty Warzone Match Is The Most Call Of Duty Thing Ever

Call of Duty’s new free-to-play Warzone mode is nearly here. Some gameplay videos have emerged ahead of launch, revealing a long list of interesting details about the battle royale mode. One particularly noteworthy reveal is what happens when you win a match.

A video from PlayStation Access shows that, when you’ve won a match, a message pops up that is very much on-brand for Call of Duty. As you can see below, it says, “Get Some.”

But it doesn’t end there. After that, the winning team (Warzone only supports squad play) gets helicoptered out of the map as the names of all the deceased scrolls through the screen as part of an “In Memoriam” segment. The camera then zooms in on your character and your username pops on screen. This happens even if you die during the match, which is pretty weird but we’ll roll with it. Check out the screens below to see what happens when you win a match.

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Warzone launches on Wednesday, March 10 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. People who own Modern Warfare will get in starting at 8 AM PT, and everyone else can download the standalone free-to-play game client and start playing four hours later.

The download will weigh between 18-22 GB if you’ve installed Modern Warfare’s most recent update. If you’re a new player, Warzone can be downloaded directly from your console’s digital store and will be much larger, taking up between 83-101 GB.

Now Playing: Call of Duty: Warzone – Official Gameplay Reveal Trailer

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Tom Brady Teams Up With Avengers Directors For A New Movie And More

NFL star Tom Brady is partnering with the directors of The Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame for a new Hollywood production label that will create movies, TV shows, and documentaries.

Brady is launching 199 Productions, and so far it has already signed “a slate of development projects” covering stories about sports, entertainment, and health and wellness.

The first project from 199 Productions is a documentary called Unseen Football, which will be produced by Joe and Anthony Russo, the directors of some of the biggest movies in box office history. Deadline reports that the film is Brady’s “love letter” to football, and it will tackle multiple levels of the game, including high school, college, and the NFL.

Unseen Football will be directed by Gotham Chopra, who previously directed Brady’s Facebook documentary series, Tom vs. Time. The series tallied 100 million views on Facebook.

The Russo brothers are big fans of Tom Brady and are excited to work with him. “We want to bring his story, and the story of the game he loves, to the big screen in a way that gives audiences an experience of football that they’ve never had before,” they said to Deadline.

As for Brady, he said about Unseen Football, “I believe in the essence of teamwork, and I have no doubt, our team will create the most magical experience for people to enjoy.”

Brady said in a post on Instagram that the name 199 Productions comes from how he was drafted 199th in the 2000 NFL Draft. Brady would of course go on to become one of the most successful and celebrated QBs in the history of the game.

The New England Patriots superstar is entering free agency for the first time in his career later this month, meaning he is free to sign with any team he wants. Whether or not he stays at New England is one of the most discussed topics in football right now. Brady offered a tease in his Instagram post, saying, “Stay tuned.. exciting times are ahead, both on and off the field.”

Brady is not the first sports megastar to set up a Hollywood production company. NBA icon LeBron James launched SpringHill Entertainment, which has produced numerous TV shows and movies, and it’s also behind the upcoming Space Jam reboot that will star James in the lead role.

Wrestlemania 36: Randy Orton Blames Fans For Edge’s Injury, And He’s Got A Point

Randy Orton is a preternaturally gifted in-ring WWE performer, and thanks to him, the most hyped match headed into Wrestlemania 36 is between Edge and Orton–two aging guys from the Ruthless Aggression Era.

What Orton does–and what very few performers do consistently–is allow his character to inform every aspect of his performance. So many wrestlers rely on their mic work to define their allegiance. Meanwhile, their physical, non-verbal actions are decidedly neutral; you can’t tell whether the person is a good guy or a bad guy by the way he or she moves. But with Orton, the performance is seamless and all-encompassing. It’s in everything he does, from the way he walks to the way he hits the ropes to the way he pauses before launching into a signature move.

He has spent the majority of his career as a heel; traditionally, it’s the more difficult role to play, but it’s also the character type Orton is most comfortable with. He elaborated on his reasoning during a 2008 interview with the Herald Sun:

“Being a babyface sucks, unless you’re 300 pounds like Batista, or a character everybody wants to see live, like The Undertaker, or Hulk Hogan, who has charisma… It’s easy for me to go out there and be a pr*ck on the show because it’s me times 10. And even though you probably don’t like me anyway, give me five minutes, and I’ll make you not like me more. Being a heel is fun. It comes so natural[ly].”

Orton has brought these considerable, natural talents to bear on his current angle with Edge, which began on the January 27 episode of Raw. The day prior at the Royal Rumble, Edge, who entered at #21 in the men’s battle royal, wrestled for the first time in nine years. His entrance and the subsequent emotional reaction of the crowd will go down as one of the greatest moments in WWE history.

It’s important to note that no one, least of all Edge, expected this to happen; at the time he was diagnosed in 2009, the message was dire: one errant bump, and Edge could end up in a wheelchair. Clearly, a convergence of modern medicine and luck have defied those odds. Still, we were told about the impossibility of this return so many times, that one couldn’t help but think of the warnings against it.

So when Orton came out on Raw to congratulate Edge on his return, and then proceeded to bash him about the head, first with an RKO, and then with a hellacious Con-Chair-To, it was the sort of meta storyline that WWE excels at. They’re giving voice to those nagging questions in the back of many fans’ minds: Is this a good idea? At what cost is he coming back? What if his opponent doesn’t protect him as carefully as he should?

WWE is addressing the elephant in the room by smashing it with a folding chair, and Orton is the perfect messenger to convey that discomfort. He has a longstanding, in-storyline history with Edge as the Rated-RKO tag team. He ascended to the top of the card around the same time Edge retired. And his heelish demeanor has been menacing, self-serious, and consistent over a 15-year period.

It’s difficult to think of another wrestler who could have destroyed Edge and gotten the kind of reaction that Orton did. The man knew to take his time. Horror–good horror–is about the buildup to the violence, rather than the violence itself. By standing around admiring his handiwork, Orton prolonged the feeling of helpless dread. Everyone knew exactly what was coming and was powerless to stop it.

On the March 2 episode of Raw, Orton explained his actions to Beth Phoenix, who was on the show to give us a medical update on her husband’s condition. Orton said he loves Edge like a brother–that by injuring him in the short term, he was saving him from a longer career where he would cripple himself, permanently this time. He suggested that Phoenix should be thankful to him–for sending her husband back into retirement, where he could be with his wife and kids again. He then blamed Phoenix for being an “enabler” before giving her an RKO for good measure.

The best characters are those with a basis in reality. And perhaps that’s why Orton is so effective in his current persona. His prior “Apex Predator” persona was an antisocial loner and psychopath who didn’t trust or care for anyone. But his current character is a more intimate, creepy type of crazy that’s rooted in who Orton really is: a husband and father of two who’s friends with Edge off-camera. In his character’s mind, his only flaw is that he “loves” his friend too much–so much that he’ll try to cripple him to save him.

It’s deeply unsettling, contradictory logic, but it’s also a contradiction that most wrestling fans struggle to reconcile. We pay money and invest emotion in watching these people beat each other, injure each other, and do long-term damage to each other. We care about these performers, but we also encourage them to bleed and throw themselves off ladders for our entertainment. And then, we also demand they do it “safely.”

Yes, there is a right way and a wrong way to take a piledriver. But the safest way to take a piledriver is to not take one in the first place. The fans are mad at Orton, but he gave them what they were paying for. Are they not entertained? In accusing Phoenix of complicity, Orton interrogates the audience’s complicity as well.

Edge will appear on the March 9 episode of Raw, where he will respond to Orton for the first time. It’s a fascinating, precarious contradiction; he needs to reassure a jittery audience that he’s healthy enough for a match at Wrestlemania, But he also needs to promise that he will beat Orton into the ground, which will expose him to the very things that injured him the last time.

It’s a balancing act, for sure. But it’s a balancing act that he, Orton, and every WWE Superstar have been doing, implicitly, for their entire careers. That they’re doing it explicitly is what makes us uncomfortable, but we’ve been an accomplice to it for years.

Now Playing: WWE – Roman Reigns Returns | Remission Announcement