Add Storage to Your Switch or PS4 for Cheap Today

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One thing’s for sure as we glide into the digital future: you need a lot of storage space for all your games. And while onboard storage for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and your PC can last a while, you’re likely to run out before too long. Thankfully, adding extra storage to all of the systems is easy. And even better, some killer deals are floating around now on microSD cards and external hard drives. Let’s have a look.

MicroSD Cards are Up to 50% Off

Game Of Thrones Coffee Cup Has Now Been Removed By HBO

As Game of Thrones heads towards its epic conclusion, the latest episode delivered one of the most controversial moments in the show’s eight year run. Never mind the shocking twists, epic battles, and cold-blooded murder–Season 8, Episode 4 revealed that Daenerys likes to relax with a takeaway coffee. After seemingly everyone on social media took it upon themselves to inform HBO that a coffee cup had been left on the set in one shot of the latest episode, the network has now removed it.

The cup appeared briefly on a table on front of Dany, as she sits watching people flocked around Jon Snow, singing his praises for his prowess in battle. HBO subsequently admitted their mistake, amusingly stating that Dany had in fact ordered a “herbal tea.” And while many presumed that the cup was from Starbucks, it was also confirmed that it was in fact from the production’s craft services.

However, fans looking for the offending cup on the network’s streaming platforms HBO Go and HBO Now will no longer be able to find it. Overnight the scene has been altered and the cup has gone. Check out the two comparison screenshots below:

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Game of Thrones Episode 3 proved to be quite divisive among fans, but the follow-up has been more positively received. Check out our full Game of Thrones, Episode 4, “The Last of the Starks” review to see what we thought of it. You can also watch the preview trailer for Episode 5 and check out some fresh theories about where things will go from here. There are just two episodes left, but each one clocks in at 80 minutes, so there’s still plenty left.

EA Access Is Coming to PlayStation 4

EA Access is coming to PlayStation 4 this July.

The service gives players access to a library of EA games, including franchises like Battlefield, FIFA, Madden, Star Wars Battlefront and more. In addition, subscribers can access EA’s Play First Trials, where they can play up to 10 hours of new games.

EA Access also grants a 10% discount on full EA game purchases, expansions and in-game items, is available for $5 a month or $30 a year and can be purchased through the PlayStation Store. As of now, it appears paying for a subscription of EA Access on Xbox One will not carry over to PS4, and vice versa.

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EA Access Coming To PS4 This July

EA Access is expanding to PlayStation 4 this summer. Starting in July, PS4 owners will be able to take part in the same console subscription service previously exclusive to Microsoft’s Xbox One.

“As we continue to invest in digital and subscription services, bringing our games to even more people across both consoles is an exciting opportunity for everyone,” EA executive VP of strategic growth Matt Bilbey said in a press release. “Our goal is to give players more choice to try and play our games wherever and however they choose and we’re happy to bring the service to PlayStation 4.”

On PS4, you will be able to pay for a monthly $5 / £4 or annual $30 / £20 USD subscription to EA Access. With a subscription, you get access to a vault of free EA titles, such as Titanfall 2, Star Wars: Battlefront II, and FIFA 18. Subscribers also get a 10 percent discount on all digital EA games, as well as their respective expansions and in-game purchases. Perhaps most notable is EA Access’ Play First Trials, which typically gives you 10 hours of early access to all new EA titles prior to their official release.

For now, the only upcoming title scheduled to come to EA Access via Play First Trials is Madden NFL 20. That said, there are a few other games releasing in the near future, all of which most likely will be made available on EA Access at some point. Respawn is releasing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order this November, a story-focused game set during the aftermath of Revenge of the Sith. The developer has Titanfall-related projects in the works as well. There are also the annual EA Sports games, such as NHL, NBA Live, and FIFA, all of which will most likely get sequels. New EA Originals are bound to make it onto the subscription service too.

Though EA has experienced some troublesome drama in recent years, ranging from Battlefront II’s microtransaction controversy to the lackluster receptions of Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem, EA Access is a positive step for the company. The service is a good deal for anyone looking to save on the combined retail price of the company’s vast library of titles. Last year, we listed EA Access as one of the major plusses for Xbox One. PC already has a version of EA Access called Origin Access.

Mario Odyssey, Zelda, Smash Bros, and More Switch Game Deals

If you buy something through this post, IGN may get a share of the sale. For more, read our Terms of Use.

It’s a good time to load up your Nintendo Switch with some of the best games available for Nintendo’s hybrid system. The Nintendo Switch shows no sign of slowing down, at least sales-wise, taking the title of the top-selling console for March 2019.

There are also rumors of a new Nintendo Switch model, or perhaps even two, which may have explained the sales on Nintendo Switch hardware that happened last month. Right now, the console sales have cooled, but you can still grab a decent deal on a Nintendo Switch.

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Tolkien Movie Director On Why Not Working With Author’s Estate Was The Best Thing To Do

The upcoming movie about The Lord of the Rings author, called Tolkien, does not come with a stamp of approval from the Tolkien Estate. That is no big surprise, as the Estate has for decades distanced itself from dramatic adaptations of the fantasy series, including Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings series. Now, Tolkien director Dome Karukoski has spoken about why it’s in the movie’s best interest to have avoided any relationship with the Tolkien Estate to begin with.

Speaking at the Tolkien premiere in New York City, Karukoski the movie might have been “suffocated” had the producers worked alongside the Tolkien Estate. “Honestly, you try not to work with the Estate for reasons obvious,” Karukoski said, as reported by Indie Wire. “Even if it would be out of kindness to ask the Estate, you start servicing them, they become your friends. You shouldn’t mess with the Estate, so the film can exist purely for your own reasons and your own feelings about the characters.”

Karukoski went on to say the the Tolkien movie producers did “very, very thorough research” to try to under Tolkien the man and the other key characters in the story, like Edith Bratt. The director said what viewers will see is that “the emotional truth of [the characters] is very true.”

Had the Tolkien producers worked with the Estate, that might have led to situations where the film would obscure or ignore certain character traits–and that wouldn’t be good, Karukoski said.

“To dig out the emotional truth of the characters, you have to try to not hide certain evidence and when you work with an Estate what happens is that that kind of gets suffocated,” he said. “You’re not allowed to do certain things so that the audience can feel an emotion from it.”

In another interview, Karukoski told SkyNews, “Even if they were the kindest Estate ever, they would kind of become your friends and you start servicing them rather than the purity of the drama you need to make the best possible film.”

Karukoski also confirmed that the producers invited the Estate to view the Tolkien movie before its premiere, but representatives reportedly declined. Karukoski said he is hopeful that members of the Estate see the movie someday.

The Tolkien Estate is led by J.R.R. Tolkien’s son, the 94-year-old Christopher Tolkien. He told French newspaper Le Monde in 2012 that “the commercialisation [of Tolkien’s work] has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing.” In the same interview, Christopher Tolkien said of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, “They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25.”

Going further back, Tolkien himself was skeptical and hesitant about the commercialization of his work, and specifically the prospect of selling the Lord of the Rings movie rights to Disney in the ’60s. He said he had a “heartfelt loathing” for Disney movies, and he said Walt Disney himself was “hopelessly corrupted” by profit-seeking.

Fox Searchlight, the production company behind Tolkien (which is now owned by Disney), said in a statement that it “has the utmost respect and admiration for Mr. Tolkien and his phenomenal contribution to literature.”

Nicholas Hoult (Mad Max: Fury Road, X-Men series) plays the adult Tolkien, while Lily Collins (To The Bone, Stuck In Love) plays Tolkien’s wife, Edith Bratt.

Middle-earth Enterprises, which is the rights-owner of Tolkien’s work separate from the Tolkien Estate, is by comparison more enthusiastic about commercial deals related to The Lord of the Rings than the Estate. Just this year, it announced a partnership with Daedalic Entertainment for a new Lord of the Rings game about Gollum. Additionally, Electronic Arts remains a Lord of the Rings licensee, as does WB Games and Lord of the Rings Online developer Standing Stone Games.

While the Tolkien Estate might not be involved with the Tolkien movie, the group does support some commercial endeavors. The Estate recently partnered with Amazon on the new Lord of the Rings TV show coming to the retailer’s streaming service.

Tolkien opens in theaters on May 10. Reviews have started to show up online–here’s a breakdown of what the critics are saying.

The Best Graphics Cards 2019

If you’re looking for the best graphics card, whether it’s RTX, GTX, or one of AMD’s new Radeon VII cards, this guide will help you decide on the best card for 1080p, 1440p, or 4K gaming.

A Minecraft AR Game Is In The Works, It Seems

A new Minecraft game is in the works, it appears, and it might not be what you expect. The company today posted a teaser video for what looks like a Minecraft augmented reality game.

The brief teaser video shows some kind of Minecraft AR game similar to Pokemon Go or Harry Potter: Wizards Unite with its blending of real and virtual world elements. Whatever it is, it looks like it’ll be announced on the Minecraft website on May 17. Check out the teaser below, and yes, the man (who looks strikingly like Xbox pioneer J. Allard) does not appear to give the woman back her phone. We don’t know why.

At E3 2015, Microsoft showcased a stunning Minecraft experience for the company’s AR HoloLens headset. But given that the new teaser video doesn’t show anyone wearing an AR headset, it looks like the Minecraft AR game could be more akin to the aforementioned Niantic games in its headset-free blending of the real and digital worlds.

According to noted Microsoft insider Brad Sams, who has accurately reported on unannounced Microsoft stories before, the Minecraft AR game is code-named “Genoa.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told The New York Times in 2015 that one of the reasons Microsoft spent $2.5 billion to acquire Minecraft and developer Mojang was due to the potential benefits of marrying Minecraft and augmented reality. “Let’s have a game that, in fact, will fundamentally help us change new categories,” Nadella said. “HoloLens was very much in the works [when Microsoft announced the deal in 2015], and we knew it.”

The May 17 reveal date for the new Minecraft AR game is not random. It presumably aligns with the Minecraft 10-year anniversary celebration scheduled for the same day. Minecraft’s creator, Markus “Notch” Persson, is being excluded from the event over his “comments and opinions.”

The official Minecraft Twitter account cheekily reacted to the Minecraft AR news today with the thinking face emoji.

In addition to the rumored new Minecraft AR game, Microsoft is working on a Minecraft dungeon-crawler called Minecraft Dungeons. The title, which doesn’t have a release date, appears to take a more linear approach rather than the open-ended sandbox nature of the mainline game.

Minecraft remains one of the most popular games on Earth. By Microsoft’s latest count, it had 91 million monthly players, which is many millions more than Fortnite has.

Avengers: Endgame’s Directors And Writers Seem To Disagree About The Movie’s Time Travel

The filmmakers behind Avengers: Endgame painted themselves into a pretty tight corner with the conclusion of the movie’s predecessor, Avengers: Infinity War. The Mad Titan Thanos managed to get all the Infinity Stones together, and with a snap of his fingers, erased half the life in the universe from existence. But this is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the heroes always had to make an attempt at undoing the damage Thanos did. The question was: How could they?

The answer, as we now know, is time travel. But time travel is confusing in movies (not to mention theoretical physics) on the best of days, when you’re not dealing with space magic that can rewrite the rules of reality on top of it. It’s so confusing, in fact, that it seems like the directors and writers of Infinity War and Endgame have differing (and mutually exclusive) ideas of how it works.

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, directors Joe and Anthony Russo described time travel in Endgame as creating alternate timelines–essentially, every time the characters return to the past, the changes they make to the past createnew, complete universes with new events, with the original universe staying intact and unaltered. That’s how the Avengers can go back to, say, the Battle of New York and accidentally release Loki. It creates a new timeline where Loki didn’t go back to Asgard, as he did in the original MCU timeline (depicted in Thor: The Dark World). The timeline were Loki is loose with the Tesseract in 2012 is its own separate universe, and the Avengers are able to travel between them somehow. This roughly matches up with how Bruce Banner explains time travel within the movie itself, so that’s good so far.

The Russos use that model of time travel to explain Captain America’s ending, one of the more confusing and controversial events of the movie. At the end of the film, Cap goes back in time to return the Infinity Stones to where the Avengers found them, but he stays in the past to spend his life with Peggy Carter, the woman Cap has said was the love of his life.

The time machine seen in the movie is less about getting people to the past, it seems, and more about helping them find their way back to their original universe, the one we’ve been watching in the MCU all along. But that raises the question: If Cap was in another timeline, how did he get back to the original timeline to give Sam Wilson his shield at the end of the film? The Russos covered that question in their EW interview, without giving a definitive answer:

“If Cap were to go back into the past and live there, he would create a branched reality. The question then becomes, how is he back in this reality to give the shield away?” Joe Russo asked with a smile. “Interesting question, right? Maybe there’s a story there. There’s a lot of layers built into this movie and we spent three years thinking through it, so it’s fun to talk about it and hopefully fill in holes for people so they understand what we’re thinking.”

We also know that Peggy was married and had kids while Steve was supposed to be frozen in a glacier, so wouldn’t Cap’s presence in her life fundamentally change those events?

The Russos agree that that’s true–but the Peggy Cap ends up with is in another timeline, which is how you get around the ethical questions that fans have raised about Cap wrecking Peggy’s family for the sake of his own happiness.

“If you went back to that timeline, between the point where Steve went into the ice [in Captain America: The First Avenger] yet before Peggy met her husband, Peggy was available,” Anthony Russo said in yet another interview, this time with The Hollywood Reporter. As for Peggy’s family, “They exist in a different timeline,” the directors said. So Cap didn’t erase her family in the original timeline, just the new one, which is maybe better, because they technically still exist somewhere?

Anyway, the way the Russos explain time travel is the way we interpreted it in Endgame as well (and really, it’s the only way it makes sense). But Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus, the movie’s writers, have a totally different take. The pair gave an interview to Fandango, in which they explained the movie’s time travel as being completely different. Instead of a lot of new timelines and alternate realities created by each of the changes the Avengers make when they travel through time, the writers said that only removing the Infinity Stones creates branches–which is similar (and similarly confusing) to what the Ancient One told Bruce Banner during the movie.

“We are not experts on time travel, but the Ancient One specifically states that when you take an Infinity Stone out of a timeline it creates a new timeline. So Steve going back and just being there would not create a new timeline,” Markus said. “So I reject the ‘Steve is in an alternate reality’ theory. I do believe that there is simply a period in world history from about ’48 to now where there are two Steve Rogers. And anyway, for a large chunk of that one of them is frozen in ice. So it’s not like they’d be running into each other.”

So Markus and McFeely say that Cap could just be in the past, living his life, and that his presence would not change the timeline–and therefore, he could just show up in 2023 to give the shield to Sam. That doesn’t seem to account for issues like Loki escaping with the Tesseract or Cap pretending to be a HYDRA agent, but it seems like the movie attempts to explain that with the conversation with the Ancient One: essentially, the Infinity Stones are magic, and since they create “the flow of time,” it’s impossible for alterations to mess up the timeline. Or something.

Lost? Yeah, us too. Maybe the overall point is that time travel is a beast for even talented Hollywood writers and directors to tackle, and trying to add it to something as huge and unwieldy as the MCU was even tougher. But while time travel might add an element of logical weirdness to Endgame, it seems like the greater MCU going forward will have something different to contend with, from what we saw in the latest trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home. That’s the idea of multiple parallel universes, something that’s straight out of Marvel Comics (not to mention last year’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse). Here’s hoping it doesn’t get too confounding.