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Fortnite Season 7 begins today and Epic Games has taken servers for the game offline in order to roll out the new content and changes that are part of it. For those eager to see what’s new, the company has published the patch notes, detailing what Season 7 offers. As with previous new seasons, this is a substantial patch that also initiates a major new event. This time around, an iceberg collides with the Fortnite Island, which changes areas to give them an icy new look.

“Discover new areas such as Frosty Flights, Polar Peak, and more,” Epic says in the patch notes. “Uncover what’s in the new Battle Pass, rule the skies with the new X-4 Stormwing plane, and change the style of some of your favorite weapons and items with Wraps in Battle Royale.”

The arrival of a new season also means a new Battle Pass is available. It features over 100 new cosmetic items for players to unlock. Epic has introduced a new cosmetic type for Season 7 called Wraps, which “allow you to customize your weapons and vehicles with all new looks to match and complement your favorite outfits.”

One of the big new modes coming to Fortnite alongside Season 7 is Creative, a sandbox experience that empowers players to craft their own unique Fortnite experiences either alone or with friends on their very own island. “It’s a brand new way to experience the world of Fortnite,” Epic said about the mode. “Design games, race around the island, battle your friends in new ways and build your dream Fortnite. It’s all happening on your own private island where everything you make is saved.” Take a look at the full patch notes for Fortnite: Battle Royale and Creative below. You can head to the game’s official website to see what’s new with Save The World.

Fortnite Update 7.00 Patch Notes

Weapons + Items

• X-4 Stormwing Plane
  • 5 total seats.
    • Seats 4 passengers (on the wings) and a pilot.
  • Has a mounted machine gun. Be careful, it can overheat.
  • Players will go into the skydiving state when exiting the X-4 Stormwing.
  • Use the roll buttons for sharp turns.
    • Pressing both will fly upside down.
    • Double tapping roll buttons will do a barrel roll.
  • Can boost and airbrake for extra mobility.
• Balloons
  • Balloons have been reworked so that while they are equipped, it is possible to use weapons and items.
  • Players can attach up to 3 Balloons to their back, lifting off the ground when the 3rd Balloon is attached.
  • Press jump while in the air to release Balloons one at a time.
  • Reduced stack size from 20 to 10.
• Updated scope crosshair on Scoped AR and Thermal AR.
• Vaulted Items
  • Note: Each new season gives us an opportunity to evaluate the current item rotation. Our goal is to have a reasonable number of items to learn, while avoiding duplicates or overlapping functionality. Based on recent (and upcoming) item additions, we’ve selected the following for vaulting.
  • Shadow Stones
  • Port-a-Fort
  • Chiller
  • Clinger
  • Double Barrel Shotgun
  • Shockwave Grenade

Gameplay

• Map Updated
  • New Biome: Iceberg
  • New Location: Frosty Flights
  • New Location: Polar Peak
  • New Location: Happy Hamlet
  • Other unnamed Points of Interest (POIs) have also appeared across the island.
  • Icy Surfaces can be found in snowy areas.
    • Players will slide on certain frozen surfaces.
  • Ziplines can be found around the Iceberg and near Expedition Outposts.
    • Latch on and zip from one end to the other.
    • Aim, fire, or use items all while conveniently traveling on Ziplines.
  • Minimap updated.
• Increased the chance of final circles ending on the outer edges of the map.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug causing weapon impact effects to play when shooting friendly players, even though no damage was being dealt.

Events

• New Tournament: Explorer Pop-Up Cup
  • Material cap set to 700/500/300 for Wood/Stone/Metal.
  • Players receive 100/50/50 Wood/Stone/Metal on elimination.
  • Resource rate increased by 40%
  • +50 effective health on elimination.
  • Safezone Changes
    • Increased chances of Supply Drops in later circles.
    • Circle 9 now travels twice as far but takes twice as long to close.
• Some tournaments will now feature a limit on the number of matches that can be played during an event session.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue which prevented players from receiving elimination rewards if a player they downed was eliminated by the Down-But-Not-Out timer ending or if their team was fully eliminated.

Performance

• Optimized spawning pickups when a player is eliminated.
• Optimized the performance of the Dynamite fuse.
• Switch audio performance improvements – falling sounds no longer hitch.
• Minor Switch rendering optimizations to help general framerate.

Audio

• Reduced the volume of bullet and pickaxe impact audio on the starting island.
• Added a hit notification audio cue when a vehicle you’re riding in recieves damage.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that would cause in-air glider audio to continue playing when eliminating a gliding player.
• Fixed an issue that would cause vehicle audio loops to get stuck on.
• Fixed “crackling” audio heard on Mobile/Switch when shooting weapons or emoting.

UI

• The Calamity, Dire, Ragnarok, and Drift Challenges have been moved to a new section at the bottom of the Challenges tab.
• Added filtering and updated the layout of the Locker.
• Vehicle Damage Numbers have been added!
  • Vehicles now have a unique damage number pop color and show damage numbers.
• Polished the Store layout to support a larger number of tiles without needing to scroll.
• Minor update to the player feedback UI to add reporting categories and a list of other players in the current or last-played match.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Battle Pass information from being displayed in the Lobby tab for players that have not purchased a Battle Pass.
• Fixed the header entry in the daily Challenges screen to work correctly when clicked.
• Moved the Nvidia Highlights button to the top right of the Battle Royale lobby to avoid conflicts with chat click zone.
• Fixed an issue where the Two Factor Authentication screen could sometimes cause input to become unresponsive.

Replay

Bug Fixes

• Nameplates will no longer sit above other HUD elements, such as the map.

Mobile

• 60 FPS enabled on the iPad Pro 2018.
• 4x MSAA Anti-Aliasing turned back on for iOS.
• Improved performance on all Galaxy Note 9 devices as well as the North American variant of the Galaxy S9 Plus.
• Added support for the Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018).

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the black border on the iPad Pro 2018.
• Fixed graphics settings on previous supported iPad Pro models.
• Fixed incorrect quality settings for iPad 6th Generation.
• Fixed occasional shadow flickerings in the game lobby.

Creative

Overview

• Creative Hub provides access to your own island, the islands of other friends who have joined on the server, or featured islands selected from the community.
• Player Islands are your creative space that automatically saves.
• Players will be able to keep a server active for up to 4 hours at a time.
• Battle Pass owners will start with 4 islands to allow for different creations. On December 13, all players will receive 4 islands.
• Friends can visit your island and island owners can set permissions to determine if your friends can edit/build while visiting.
  • The My Island menu is accessible through the Main Menu in-game while on your island.

Gameplay

• Phone
  • This is the in-game tool your character holds that’s used to edit, copy, and manipulate props in the world. Experiment with its features to discover all the things it can do.
• Fly mode allows players to quickly travel around their island and create in mid-air.
  • Double jump to start flying.
• My Island menu
  • The “Game” tab starts and stops player-created games. When a game is stopped your island reverts to its pre-game state.
    • You may experience functionality issues with this feature as we continue to make improvements.
  • The “Game Settings” tab sets health, fall damage, spawn location, etc and can be changed at any time through the My Island menu.
  • The “Island Tools” tab resets your island back to its original state and sets who can build on your island.

Creative Inventory

• Accessed from the inventory menu.
• Inventory allows you to spawn prefabs, devices, weapons, or consumables.
• Use Inventory to create your own chests or llamas for your island filled with items you select.
• Prefabs are pre-made structures the player can place on their island with throwables.
• Devices are placeable items that allow you to create games.

Prefabs

• 8 obstacle courses
• 25 buildings from Battle Royale
• 34 galleries of building tiles and props

Devices

• New Devices
  • Ice Block
  • Damage Rails
  • Speed Boost
  • Timer
  • Scoreboard
  • Player Spawn
• From Battle Royale:
  • Spikes
  • Chiller
  • Bouncer
  • Launch Pad
  • Mounted Turret
  • Cozy Campfire

Performance

• The memory bar at the bottom of the HUD provides feedback on how much you can build on your island.
  • This will change as we gather more data on performance and memory usage.

Social

• Players will have the ability to join in progress games with any of their Epic friends, even if they are not in a party together. Find your friend in the social panel and select Join Creative Server. Your friend must have their Privacy option set to Friends or Public to allow those who aren’t in a party to join.

Replay

• Replays will record the entire 4-hour play session, however, these will be saved in 30-minute individual files.
  • Replays are off by default and can be enabled in the settings.

Mobile

• Creative buttons added as well as a new “Creative” visibility setting. Buttons with extra functionality are in the HUD Layout Tool.
  • The “Creative” visibility is off in the tool by default, so buttons will be hidden until they are turned on.

Microsoft has big plans for its Xbox Game Pass subscription service. Speaking at an event today, Xbox boss Phil Spencer talked about how Microsoft not only wants to bring Xbox Game Pass to PC, which Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella first revealed earlier this year, but also to “every device” out there. Speaking at a Barclays conference in San Francisco, Spencer talked about how Xbox Game Pass–when it eventually comes to more platforms like mobile through streaming–will help Xbox reach billions of gamers worldwide instead of millions.

“When you think about reaching a customer with this content where their only compute device could be an Android phone, you think about, ‘What are all the ways that person pays for content today’? So we need to make sure that we’re world-class at free-to-play content, but we also look at subscription as a much lower barrier way for a customer to build a library of content,” Spencer said.

“So we built Xbox Game Pass–it started on console, it will come to PC, and eventually it will come to every device–we use the flywheel that we have with customers on an Xbox to start the growth in Xbox Game Pass. But as somebody sitting back and taking a longer-term view of where our business is going, you should look at that as a business model that we think scales to billions of people not hundreds of millions of people like retail does.”

Xbox Game Pass could come to mobile through Microsoft’s new game-streaming service Project xCloud. Microsoft is already testing this service internally, and Spencer mentioned that he was using the service during his recent travels. Right now, the service streams from a data center in Washington, but eventually, it will roll out in other places around the world. Spencer said Microsoft is uniquely positioned for success in streaming because it has Azure data centers around the world already, which would in theory help cut down on latency issues.

Also during the Q&A, Spencer talked about how Microsoft’s recent acquisition spree–it’s acquired or established seven new studios in the past six months–is all about the company building a bigger network of studios to help support its efforts for Xbox Game Pass and the wider Xbox catalog.

Xbox Game Pass costs $10 USD per month on Xbox One, and for that fee you can play more than 100 Xbox One and Xbox 360 games. Microsoft sweetened the deal further this year by announcing that all first-party games will launch into Xbox Game Pass, meaning subscribers this year got Forza Horizon 4, State of Decay 2, Sea of Thieves, and others at no extra cost. Next year, subscribers will get Gears 5 for nothing extra, while Halo Infinite will also eventually come to the service. While Xbox Game Pass is similar in structure to Netflix, games are downloaded, not streamed. However, Spencer is suggesting that Xbox Game Pass may eventually include support for streaming through xCloud (which is a working title), and that’s an exciting prospect to think about.

Xbox Game Pass already has “millions” of subscribers, so it does indeed seem to be off to a good start. According to Spencer, another benefit of Xbox Game Pass is that it introduces players to genres they might not otherwise check out. Developers theoretically stand to benefit from putting their games in Xbox Game Pass, too, as it might help bring in new players potentially years after release in a similar way to how you might check out an old show on Netflix, enjoy it, and watch more.

What are your thoughts on Xbox Game Pass and subscription services for games in general? Let us know in the comments below!

The Resident Evil movie franchise will continue with a reboot set to follow the six Milla Jovovich-starring films that together generated $1 billion at the box office. Now, it’s been reported that 47 Meters Down director Johannes Roberts has come aboard to write and direct the reboot.

According to Variety, which first reported the news, the Resident Evil movie reboot is a “high priority” for producer Constantin Films. That company was also behind the six Resident Evil movies that starred Jovovich and were directed or produced by her husband Paul W.S. Anderson.

Those six movies featured Jovovich as Alice fighting against Umbrella Corp. and zombies. It remains to be seen what the story might be for the upcoming reboot, while details about the cast are also under wraps for now. Production on the film is expected to begin in 2019.

The six Resident Evil movies so far were Resident Evil, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Resident Evil: Extinction, Resident Evil: Afterlife, Resident Evil: Retribution, and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter.

While Jovovich and Anderson and done with Resident Evil movies, they’re now working on a film based on another Capcom property: Monster Hunter. Jovovich stars in the film alongside Ron Perlman; you can see the first image here.

The launch of The Black Armory, Destiny 2‘s new DLC expansion, should have marked an exciting event for players. Instead, it proved to be a major source of frustration, and in response, Bungie has quickly made a small change to make it more accessible to everyone.

As part of the Annual Pass, The Black Armory will introduce a variety of content over the coming weeks and months, including a new Raid this Friday. The first major piece of content came with Tuesday’s update in the form of the first Lost Forge, a sort of Horde mode-style activity for three players. While it does address some complaints about other activities by offering matchmaking (ensuring you don’t need to bring your own full group to participate), it did have another big problem: The Power level requirements were way too high.

A recent Destiny 2 update raised the game’s maximum Power level from 600 to 650 for all players. Those with the DLC who can take part in the new Forge activity found that due to steep requirements, they were unable to reasonably play the new mode. Instead, they were forced to grind through existing content to raise their Power level instead of playing what’s new–not exactly the experience anyone was hoping for on launch day. Bungie is aware of the complaints and has taken a first step toward addressing them.

“Over the past day, we’ve been taking in your feedback,” Bungie wrote on its website. “It’s become clear that we made the initial Power requirements for the Lost Forges too high, keeping those sweet new rewards out of reach. Some players at 600 Power have been unable to dive in and beat the final boss without grinding for new Power first.

“We have just delivered a server-side update to reduce the Power requirements for all the encounters in the Lost Forges by five. We fully acknowledge that this is a small move, but it is the one that we can make today. This is not the full extent of the changes to the player experience that we are investigating, but it should give Guardians at 600 Power a better chance at completing the activity.”

Bungie also said it plans to further address questions of how players who are further behind can best boost their Power level and catch up to participate in the new content. “The answers to those questions are coming. We have some existing plans and some new ideas in the pipeline,” it said, promising further information in its weekly blog post update on Thursday.