Here’s How You Can Expand Your PS5 SSD Storage

With Sony providing a comprehensive breakdown of the PlayStation 5 architecture, we finally have some answers to question Mark Cerny left lingering all the way back during GDC in March. Top of the list has been how Sony is approaching expandable storage, which we now know will support a wide range of consumer SSDs.

Earlier this year Mark Cerny confirmed that Sony would allow PS5 players to expand upon the internal SSD storage using off-the-shelf NVMe SSDs, a vastly different approach to Microsoft who have instead partnered with SSD manufacturers to create proprietary SSD expansion cards.

Sony’s approach allows for more flexibility in how you expand your PS5 storage but is constrained by a list that the company approves beforehand. That’s to ensure that the SSD you purchase matches the minimum 5.5 GB/s bandwidth, only afforded by brand-new PCIe 4.0 SSDs that companies like Samsung and Western Digital have started producing.

Despite being weeks from launch, Sony hasn’t yet announced any compatible SSDs for the PS5. The teardown does, however, show how easy it will be to install once they become available. The side panels of the PS5 can easily pop off, revealing an SSD slot on the one side. That slot features support for the full gamut of SSD lengths, including 2230, 2242, 2260, and 2280 standard sizes. Cerny did mention that some SSDs will be constrained by their height too, so it’s still wise to wait on Sony’s approval before making a purchase.

M.2 NVMe slot on the PS5
M.2 NVMe slot on the PS5

The existence of the slot also confirms that you won’t be replacing the PS5’s internal SSD, which has its modules soldered directly to the console’s board. Sony has created a customer controller for the PS5 SSD, with a total of 825GB included with the console. Right now, most commercial PCIe 4.0 SSDs come in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB variants, but that’s likely to change soon.

Sony hasn’t yet detailed if you’ll be able to use external HDDs to play backwards compatible titles, which Microsoft is supporting on the Xbox Series X/S. The PlayStation 5 launches on November 12, with the digital version retailing for $400 and the disc-based model at $500. Check out our PS5 preorder guide for notifications on stock across various retailers.

Now Playing: Sony – Official PS5 Console Hardware Teardown Trailer

Ultimate Warrior Gets Weird On Arsenio, WWE Niagara Falls, And More | Wrestle Buddies Episode 23

This week on Wrestle Buddies, GameSpot’s professional wrestling podcast, Chris E. Hayner and Mat Elfring are spending their time in the past, a time when wrestling was much sillier and arguably so much greater. After all, this was a time when wrestlers appeared in character on late night talk shows. What’s not to love?

First, we jump in the time machine and go back to 1990 to remember the Ultimate Warrior’s appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show. Warrior was there to promote his Wrestlemania VI match with Hulk Hogan, though if you’ve watched the segment you’d think he was selling the idea of grunting, flexing, and taking off his shirt as a lifestyle. Throughout the interview, Arsenio looks caught somewhere between terrified and genuinely amused. After breaking down the appearance–and Warrior’s nonsensical answers–we understand why.

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Then, it’s time to dig into another of WWE’s non-wrestling business ventures. This time, we head to Canada for a visit to WWE Niagara Falls, the finest wrestling-related tourist trap north of the border. WWE Niagara Falls was essentially a wrestling merchandise store with a theme park ride on the roof. Nobody really knows why, but you’ll be shocked to find out this place lasted nearly a decade before it finally closed.

All that plus we answer your questions! New episodes of Wrestle Buddies are released every Thursday on the podcast platform or app of your choice, including Spotify, Stitcher, and Apple Podcasts.

Star Wars: Squadrons Update 1.1 Now Live On All Platforms

An update has been rolled out for Star Wars: Squadrons on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One that stabilizes the game, tweaks flight controls, and fixes bugs. The full patch notes are outlined below.

The meat of the patch is dedicated to bug fixes. One in particular centers on an issue found in the Fleet Battles tutorial mission where it would not complete if the player was destroyed at certain points during the operation. The update also addresses several other problem areas, including complications with V-Sync, Imperial squadrons being invisible during Dogfight’s opening cinematic, and the 3000 series of Nvidia GPUs defaulting to low graphics mode.

Elsewhere in the patch are adjustments to flight controls. This includes adding an option to adjust the deadzone for controllers and flight sticks separately. as well as tweaking the default input curves for flight sticks so that they feel more responsive.

The update also stabilizes the spectator mode in online PvP and implements other stability improvements and fixes.

In other Star Wars: Squadrons news, developer EA Motive Studios has confirmed that there are currently no plans for post-launch DLC.

Full Star Wars: Squadrons Update 1.1 Patch Notes

Fleet Battles Ranks

  • Fixed an issue where players could not be correctly placed in a rank after initial placement matches
    • Players who have not started their placement matches will be able to place normally
    • Players who have started their placement matches will have their remaining matches use the corrected system
      • There will be no rank resets at this time

Controls

  • Added options in the menu called “Controller Global Deadzone” and “Flight Stick Global Deadzone” which will allow you to modify the deadzone individually for standard controllers and Flight Sticks
  • Adjusted the default input curves for Flight Sticks, which should make controls feel more responsive

VR

  • Adjusted some of the visual effects in VR mode, specifically addressing the brightness and bloom when dropping bombs from your Starfighter

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an issue where the Fleet Battles Tutorial could become incompletable if the player’s starfighter was destroyed at certain points during the exercise
  • Fixed an issue where V-Sync would sometimes become disabled upon returning to the main menu
  • Fixed a bug where the Imperial squadron was not visible in some instances during the opening cinematic for Dogfight mode
  • Fixed an issue that was causing the 3000 series Nvidia GPUs to default to low quality graphics settings
  • We’ve removed a couple of instances where development text was appearing in the game
  • Fixed an issue ensuring VOIP (voice chat) toggles work as intended
  • Fixed an issue on PC where single-player medals could be removed after playing other game modes. (NOTE: We are aware of this issue on console as well and a fix for that will be coming soon)

Stability

  • Improved stability in the Spectator feature of online PvP modes
  • Other general stability improvements and fixes

Now Playing: Star Wars: Squadrons – Single Player Impressions

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Watch Dogs: Legion Is More Horrifying Than Expected

When I played Watch Dogs: Legion a few months back, I was keeping a keen eye on its depiction of a collective revolt against injustice, state-sanctioned violence, and technological exploitation. After all, those are the running themes that the game has been emphasizing in its presentation and early story threads, and they should be analyzed. I recently got another crack at the game to play all-new story missions, and it’s turned into something a bit unexpected.

In these new missions, I got to see story branches that dive into Clan Kelley, the organized crime ring that runs the streets of London in the wake of a hostile paramilitary takeover. It’s not really a surprise that organized crime is in bed with corrupt authorities, but based on what I played, things turn more sinister and dark, in a way that’s probably not great for the squeamish.

As you reveal the truths of Clan Kelley and its leader Mary Kelley, you discover that she’s been collecting people to force them into servitude, and, well, eventual victims of organ harvesting. Albion authorities (the PMC that now runs London) have been leveraging anti-immigrant sentiment to enforce racist policies and illegally round up vulnerable, marginalized people and detain them in refugee camps. It’s all plainly stated in dialogue between your character and your AI assistant, as you’re trying to track down a victim and DedSec affiliate named Angel Lopez. But the knife is twisted even deeper once you reveal this system provides a cover and an avenue for Kelley to kidnap and enslave these people. Yeah, it’s straight up human trafficking.

In this one mission, you sneak into the detainment camp to meet with your undercover DedSec contact and trace the whereabouts of Angel, who fell victim to this horrible system. Then you figure out that these people are being controlled and subjugated through a microchip that gets implanted into their bodies–it’s essentially a killswitch. This then provides a lead that brings you to the location of a heavily guarded incinerator that houses an underground operation where those same victims are being harvested for organs, and their corpses left to burn to ash.

Bombings around London kick off Legion's story, and it has fueled xenophobia and racist law enforcement.
Bombings around London kick off Legion’s story, and it has fueled xenophobia and racist law enforcement.

While the contents of these missions aren’t explicitly gory, the subject matter and visual presentation of it all is enough to clearly get the point across–and in some capacity, it’s rather horrifying. Especially with the implication of poor, marginalized, and/or immigrant people being the targets of a truly evil organized criminal ring. In the spirit of a content warning, I think folks should know that this can be traumatizing from the conceptual level.

This particular mission branch then leads you to Mary Kelley’s secret mansion where she has dozens of these people working as her slaves, controlled by the fact that Kelley can seize their bodies or decide to kill them with a push of a button. You fly a drone through the mansion, and past rooms of people being held captive against their will, to solve circuit puzzles and eventually hack a computer to get hold of her surveillance system. In the mission’s concluding cutscene you watch as one of her victims is punished for trying to escape, facing acts of violence and a speech from Kelley about how she’s ‘saving’ them from their previous lives, and that her victims have nowhere else to go.

Mary Kelley is truly evil.
Mary Kelley is truly evil.

That’s how the Clan Kelley story branch concluded in the preview demo. And while there’s of course more to uncover in this story thread, and our DedSec protagonists acknowledge the horrifying nature of it all, Watch Dogs: Legion has a lot of work cut out in order to make this style of violence and trauma work in its real-world narrative context. I’m caught off guard a bit by these turns in the story, though I can’t really say I’m into it based on a preview. We’ve seen these types of dark high-tech stories before–it’s provocative, but Legion is also playing with fire here.

Watch Dogs always had a chilling undertone as it related to the dangers of tech and the implications of a world governed by it, but Legion is playing this up in a much more explicit, sometimes grotesque, fashion. Aside from implanted microchips allowing Kelley to control people in the aforementioned mission branch, I played through a related but different set of missions–this time it’s about the horrors of artificial intelligence gone wrong.

My mission was to investigate an AI tech giant called Broca Tech, and this led to another example of Watch Dogs: Legion’s unexpected turn towards the horrific. Again, I tracked down the residence of its evil leader, this time her name is Skye Larsen. And, of course, she publicly flaunts the benefits of how AI will thrust people into a new age devoid of our worldly problems, and uses a story about her mom to get that uncomfortable sympathetic angle in speeches. Well, that’s all a straight up lie.

Hologram replays of past events give you insight on how Skye Larsen abused her mother.

When you infiltrate Larsen’s house, you find out that she manipulated her ailing mother and used her as a tool to experiment and develop the AI tech she’s peddling called Daybreak. It’s basically a system of being able to upload your consciousness to a computer, and you discover all this by investigating an underground lab beneath Larsen’s house. However, it’s not just a lab, it’s presented as an artificial dream-like house on a prairie, which served as a place to use her mom like a lab rat.

You watch the chilling hologram reconstructions of the events that took place, all disgusting scenes of how Larsen slowly killed her mother to create Daybreak, despite the pleas to not do it. With this technology, the person subjected to having their consciousness uploaded has to physically die. But you then see how Larsen is able to modify and control her mom-turned-AI, and with her company trying to reach the masses with this tech, you can only imagine the insidious implications.

As the player, you eventually communicate with mom-turned-AI who offers information in exchange for a true, merciful death by shutting down the AI system altogether. That concluded the story missions available in the preview demo, a bone-chilling note to end on.

The mom-turned-AI uses what's left of her self-consciousness to ask for true death.

What I found surprising about all of what I saw from Watch Dogs: Legion in this play session wasn’t simply the fact that it’s going for horrifying imagery and narrative beats, but that this tone isn’t really implied in other aspects of the game or how it’s been presented. I mean, it’s probably easier to sell people on the idea of carrying out a revolution as a British grandma who punches police in the crotch, so I get it. While there is room for the game to explore these darker themes to drive a compelling story, my hope is that it can justify doing so without devolving into trauma porn.

I expect the story threads to be tied up in some neat fashion, because the idea of genuinely terrifying exploitation of technology and the corrupted authoritarian police state makes a Venn diagram that’s almost a circle. I just don’t know if Watch Dogs: Legion is the game to do it in a meaningful way. I came away from my first preview interested by how upfront it is about political themes of revolution, but feeling it could be better about committing to the message it thinks it’s trying to send. This new demo showed me that it’s opening itself to a whole other narrative thread that could get messy, at least in the storyline of Clan Kelley.

In a way, it’s captivating to unravel the dark mysteries, and exact justified revenge and retaliation against these perpetrators. Watch Dogs: Legion isn’t shy about portraying the terrible things that those in power can and will do to underprivileged and marginalized people. But we should be critical of how it’s being conveyed throughout the game, and be mindful that–while, yes, this is some wild video game–we’re exposing ourselves to traumatizing imagery that may not sit well with some us who are especially conscious of bad shit that isn’t far off from our real world.

We’ll find out how the story pays off when Watch Dogs: Legion launches on October 29 for current-gen platforms and PC and later in November for next-gen systems.

Now Playing: 20 Minutes of Surprisingly Serious Gameplay – Watch Dogs: Legion

The Expanse Season 5 Trailer Reveals a Galactic Conflict

Amazon Prime Video has revealed that The Expanse will debut its fifth season on the streamer on December 16, 2020. The commerce and tech giant also released the first official trailer for the upcoming season during its NYCC 2020 panel.

You can watch the exciting new trailer for Season 5 of The Expanse in the video below, or at the top of the page:

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Here’s how the streamer describes Season 5, which is based on the fifth book in author James S.A. Corey’s (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) Expanse saga, titled Nemesis Games:

“Season five of the series picks up as multitudes of humans leave the solar system in search of new homes and vast fortunes on the earth-like worlds beyond the alien Ring, and a heavy price for centuries of exploitation of the Belt finally comes due and a reckoning is at hand. For the crew of the Rocinante and the leaders of the Inner Planets and the Belt, the past and present converge, bringing forth personal challenges that have wide-reaching repercussions throughout the Solar System. Amos (Wes Chatham) returns to Earth to confront his past and the legacy of the life he fought to leave behind. Naomi (Dominique Tipper) reaches out to her estranged son in a desperate bid to save him from his father’s toxic influence. Bobbie (Frankie Adams) and Alex (Cas Anvar) confront the collapse of Mars as they chase a shadowy cabal with ties to terrorists and criminals. Holden (Steven Strait) wrestles with the consequences of his own past with the Protomolecule, the aliens who built it, and the mystery of what killed them.”

What did you think of the trailer for Season 5 of The Expanse? Let us know in the comments. And for more on The Expanse, be sure to check out our review of Season 4 right here.

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David Griffin still watches DuckTales in his pajamas with a cereal bowl in hand. He’s also the TV Editor for IGN. Say hi on Twitter.

Amazon’s The Expanse Season 5 Gets First Trailer And Release Date

Amazon Prime Video’s original series The Expanse will be landing on the streaming service very soon. Announced today at New York Comic-Con, the first three episodes of Season 5 will land on Amazon on December 16. Additionally, the first trailer has arrived.

The show will pick up as humans leave the solar system to find habitable planets beyond the alien Ring. Check out what you can expect from the upcoming season in the new trailer below.

Will the humans be able to find a new world or will conflicts tear them all apart? What’s more, will this be the season where viewers learn more about the Protomolecule and the mystery of what killed the aliens who built it?

Considering how expansive–pun intended–the series is, you can expect a lot of various locations from within the galaxy. This season will see some of the characters back on Earth, dealing with the collapse of Mars, and travelling throughout space in search of something better.

Episodes will be released every Wednesday, with the season wrapping up on February 3, 2021. Based on the science fiction novels by James S.A. Corey, the series was developed and written by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby.

American Horror Story: The Best of Adina Porter

You may recognize Adina Porter from True Blood. She has appeared in four seasons of American Horror Story, and was nominated for a primetime Emmy for her role as Beverly Hope in AHS Cult. Adina made her AHS debut way back in Season 1’s Murder House, but she only popped up in a minor role. Here she played Sally Freeman, one of Ben Harmon’s patients that we see him working with in the Murder House.

Adina wouldn’t return to American Horror Story until five seasons later in a much bigger role. Here she played Lee Harris, a former cop that struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. A season later, Adina would return to play Beverly Hope in Cult, a performance that earned her an Emmy nomination. Beverly was an on-air journalist for WBNR Channel 7 news who would eventually get twisted into Kai Anderson’s clown cult.

In her most recent appearance in AHS Apocalypse, Adina played Dinah Stevens, a former actress turned talk show host that we meet at Outpost 3. In reality though, she’s actually the reigning Voodoo Queen since Marie Laveau was banished to Hell at the end of Season 3.

Star Wars: Squadrons Dev Has No Plans For Post-Launch DLC

Developer EA Motive Studios has confirmed that there are currently no plans to add more post-launch content to Star Wars: Squadrons on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

In an interview with UploadVR, creative director Ian Frazier said that the intention with Squadrons was never to create or turn the finished product into a live-service experience.

“Never say never, so to speak, but as far as our philosophy goes we’re not trying to treat the game as a live service,” Frazier said. “We don’t want to say, ‘It’s almost done!’ and then dribble out more of it over time, which to be honest is how most games work these days. So we’ve tried to treat it in kind of an old-school approach saying, ‘You’ve paid the $40, this is the game and it’s entirely self-contained. We’re not planning to add more content, this is the game, and we hope you understand the value proposition.'”

When asked whether Squadrons would eventually receive new maps and modes, Frazier highlighted Star Wars Battlefront II as fulfilling that role.

“From pretty early on we wanted to be a space combat game, emphasis on space,” Frazier said. “So even though we do go into the outer atmosphere of Yavin Prime, we never go anywhere truly terrestrial because we wanted to separate the game in that flavor from something like Battlefront, which we already have.”

As it stands, the way Star Wars: Squadrons has been built is the final version of the game. What you see for $40 is what you get, and critics seem largely content with the experience. Squadrons also received a new patch that stabilizes the game and tweaks flight controls.

In our Star Wars: Squadrons review impressions, editor Edmond Tran said, “Juggling all tasks required on your cool starfighter while soaking in the sights and sounds of Star Wars has been a real treat in the first 8 hours, even if I’m left a bit wanting.”

Now Playing: Star Wars: Squadrons – Single Player Impressions

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First Trailer For Robert Kirkman’s Invincible Revealed

At NYCC 2020, Amazon Prime Video has released the official teaser trailer for its upcoming adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s successful comic book series, Invincible, which will make its debut on the streamer in 2021.

Here’s how Amazon describes the series: “Invincible is an adult animated superhero show that revolves around seventeen-year-old Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun), who’s just like every other guy his age — except that his father is the most powerful superhero on the planet, Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons). But as Mark develops powers of his own, he discovers that his father’s legacy may not be as heroic as it seems.”

Check out the thrilling first trailer for Invincible in the video below, or at the top of the page:

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Accompanying Simmons and Yeun on this epic animated journey is an impressive lineup of voice actors, including Sandra Oh (Killing Eve), Seth Rogen (This is the End), Gillian Jacobs (Community), Andrew Rannells (Black Monday, Girls), Zazie Beetz (Deadpool 2), Mark Hamill (Star Wars: The Last Jedi), Walton Goggins (Justified), Jason Mantzoukas (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Mae Whitman (Good Girls), Chris Diamantopoulos (Silicon Valley), Melise (The Flash), Kevin Michael Richardson (The Simpsons), and Grey Griffin (Avengers Assemble).

While no exact release date was announced during the panel, Amazon did say that we can expect to see the series sometime in 2021. What did you think of the trailer? Let us know in the comments below.

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David Griffin still watches DuckTales in his pajamas with a cereal bowl in hand. He’s also the TV Editor for IGN. Say hi on Twitter.

Robert Kirkman’s Invincible Gets First Trailer For Amazon

The wait is finally over for fans of the Skybound comic series Invincible as Amazon Prime Video revealed the teaser trailer for the upcoming animated series of the same name.

Unlike many other superhero animated series, this is not for kids. At times, Invincible is brutal, violent, and exceptionally bloody. There is a little taste of that violence in the video below.

The comic was written by Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead) and featured art by Ryan Ottley. It followed the adventures of 17-year-old Mark Grayson, who is the son of the most powerful superhero on Earth, Omni-Man. Mark learns he has powers of his own and that there’s something more ominous at play within his house. From there, the series takes a ridiculous amount of twists and turns through its 144-issue run.

The animated series stars Steven Yeun as Mark and J.K. Simmons as his father. The series will also feature Sandra Oh (Killing Eve), Seth Rogen (This is the End), Gillian Jacobs (Community), Mark Hamill (Star Wars: The Last Jedi), Jason Mantzoukas (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Mae Whitman (Good Girls), and more.

Invincible will land on Amazon Prime Video sometime in 2021.