Month: September 2019

Apple had a wealth of announcements to share during its Apple September event. Along with revealing new details about the Apple Arcade and Apple TV+ services, the company showcased the next generation of its flagship products, including the new iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max.

The standard iPhone 11 features a 6.1 inch liquid retina display and true tone display, as well as Dolby Atmos support. The phone also has a dual camera system, with 12mp wide and ultra wide cameras, and 120-degree field of view. The iPhone 11 will come in six colors: red, black, yellow, white, purple, and green.

Apple briefly touched on other aspects of the phone as well. In terms of battery life, the company says the iPhone 11 will last one hour longer than the iPhone XR, and it features an A13 bionic CPU chip. As far as pricing goes, the iPhone 11 will retail for $699.

That isn’t the only new iPhone on the way, however. Apple also unveiled the iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max–higher end models with better specs. While the standard iPhone 11 comes with two cameras, the Pro boasts three. It comes in four colors–midnight green, space gray, silver, and gold–and is made from surgical grade stainless steel. It is also 15% more energy efficient.

Regarding battery life, the iPhone 11 Pro lasts four hours longer than the iPhone XS, while the Pro Max lasts up to five hours longer than the XS Max. The phones also come with a fast charge adaptor right out of the box. Of course, with better specs comes a heftier price tag. The 11 Pro costs $999, while the 11 Pro Max is $1099. You’ll be able to pre-order the phones beginning this Friday, September 13, and they’ll begin shipping out on September 20.

Apple’s September event is still ongoing, and it was packed with announcements. Among other things, the company also gave viewers their first look at the seventh-generation iPad. You can catch up on all the biggest news from the event below.

During the September 10 Apple event, we got to see a trailer for the upcoming Apple TV+ original See, which stars Jason Momoa.

The Apple Original takes place in the future, hundreds of years after a virus killed most humans. The ones that survived were left blinded, as was the rest of humanity going onward. The world has become much more primitive, and one day, twins are born with the ability to see. Check out the trailer for yourself below.

See will launch on the same day as Apple TV+, November 1. The Apple event also revealed the monthly price for the service, and Apple TV+ will be cheaper and launch sooner than the highly-anticipated Disney+.

Apple TV+ has plenty of other originals coming to subscribers, including Kumail Nanjiani’s Little America, which explores stories of people immigrating to the United States in a documentary-style format.

The Apple event also introduced the world to the 7th generation of iPad and some pricing info on the upcoming Apple Arcade monthly service. The biggest news of the event was information of iPhone 11, which has a dual camera system, with 12mp ultra wide camera, and 120-degree field of view.

The Apple Event took place today, and along with multiple announcements about its Apple Arcade gaming service and Apple TV+ streaming service, the new generation of iPads was revealed. Apple outlined the specs and capabilities, and the starting price of the new line of tablets.

The new 7th generation iPad pricing begins at $329 USD and will be available starting September 30. The iPad Mini starts at $399 and features a 7.9-inch display, while the slimmer iPad Air has a 10.5-inch screen goes for $499. At the top of the line, there will be the iPad Pro that has the option for an 11-inch or 12.9-inch screen and starts at $800.

First off, the new iPad (base model) will have a 10.2-inch retina display with nearly 3.5 million pixels–it’ll be able to output 2.5 times the brightness, have a viewing angle that’s 3.7 times a wider, and pack 3.3 times the pixel density from the previous generation. Apple’s A10 Fusion chip still powers the base model iPad, which is the SOC (CPU and GPU) in the previous iPads and the iPhone 7 line. All other iPad models (Mini, Air, and Pro) are powered by the stronger A12 Bionic chip (A12X on the Pro). See all the 7th generation iPad details below.

The home screen has been redesigned for the new OS, called iPadOS. There was also a demonstration on how there will be deeper integration with Apple Pencil. To improve usability, a floating keyboard will be featured on the side for one-handed typing and more of the screen is visible. These iPads will feature a smart connector so you can connect the smart keyboard, which folds into a cover.

For all our coverage of the Apple Event, be sure to read through our stories below.

During the Apple event on September 10, more information about the company’s streaming service was revealed, and it’s going up against Disney+. CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, revealed that Apple TV+ will launch on November 1, and it will cost $5 per month for the whole family.

The new streaming service will be available in over 100 countries during the launch. Apple TV+ will have its own original series, including See, starring Jason Momoa. The series revolves around a future where humans have lost the ability to see, and the world has become much more primitive. A full trailer was shown for the upcoming series.

Apple TV+ will have a large selection of original series in the pipeline available at or soon after launch. This includes the return of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories, a new show based on pulp science-fiction stories Spielberg read as a kid. This show is a reboot of his show of the same name that ran from 1985-87 on NBC.

What’s most interesting about the Apple TV+ announcement that it will be beating Disney+ to market by 11 days–Disney+ arrives on November 12. Additionally, Apple’s service will be cheaper coming in at $5 per month over Disney+’s $7 a month–or $13 a month when Disney+ is bundled with ESPN+ and the ad-supported version of Hulu.

Apple announced a lot during the company’s event. The 7th generation of iPad is coming, and aside from specific specs, we know that pricing starts around $329. Also, Apple revealed more about the upcoming Apple Arcade, including monthly pricing and a look at a few games from developers.

With demanding games like Control releasing more and more these days, the base consoles are starting to show their age, especially when it comes to maintaining a solid frame rate. The more powerful PS4 Pro and Xbox One X are very appealing for this very reason, and if you’ve been looking to upgrade or enter the console space at all, then Newegg has a great deal on a PS4 Pro bundle that may interest you.

PS4 Pro with Sekiro, Black Ops 4, and For Honor

$400 ($533)

See it at Newegg

This bundle is going for $400 USD down from $533. It comes with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, and For Honor: Marching Fire Edition. There’s nothing to indicate when this deal will end or how much stock is left, so if you’re interested, you may want to act sooner rather than later.

Sekiro received a 9/10 in GameSpot’s review, with our own Tamoor Hussain saying, “The orchestration of intense one-on-one boss encounters that truly test your mettle, and slower-paced stealth sections that let you take on battles at your own pace, is masterful.”

Our Black Ops 4 review scored it an 8. GameSpot’s Kallie Plagge praised the smart level design and all three modes: Versus, Zombies, and Blackout. “Blackout pushes Call of Duty in an entirely new direction, making use of aspects from both multiplayer and Zombies for a take on the battle royale genre that stands on its own,” she wrote. “Sure, there isn’t a traditional single-player campaign, but with the depth and breadth of what is there, Black Ops 4 doesn’t need it.”

For Honor’s review also awarded it an 8, in which Matt Espineli praised its satisfying and layered combat and unique, fulfilling modes. Since this review, much has been added to the game as Ubisoft continues to support it. This includes new characters, maps, and much more.

At Apple’s September event, the company revealed new details regarding its all-you-can-eat Apple Arcade subscription service. Among the details were a release date of September 19, and a price point of $4.99 per month. The company also announced it will have a free one-month trial.

One subscription will allow a whole family to download and play the included games. The announcements came as part of a stage presentation where Apple also detailed a few of the exclusives coming to the service. Apple said it will have 100 games, more exclusives at launch than any other service, and a dedicated Arcade tab with new games added monthly.

The presentation showed off three exclusives, from Konami, Capcom, and Annapurna Interactive. Konami is bringing back Frogger with a new game developed by Q-Games. Frogger will use items like bombs to clear obstacles and can turn into a Super Frogger. Capcom debuted Shinsekai Into The Depths, an underwater exploration game. And Annapurna announced Sayonara Wild Hearts for the service.

The event is ongoing and we expect new hardware and more to come.

Developing…

Red Dead Redemption 2‘s big summer update is now live on PS4 and Xbox One. As Rockstar previously detailed, the update introduces a wealth of new content to the game’s online component, Red Dead Online, including the first Frontier Pursuits, new items, an array of quality-of-life improvements, and more.

The biggest addition are the aforementioned Frontier Pursuits–specialized roles that come with their own unique activities, skills, and unlockable items. Players have a choice of three Frontier Pursuits. The Bounty Hunter role focuses on tracking down wanted criminals; the Trader can open up a shop and sell animal pelts and meat; and the Collector specializes in searching for valuable treasures. You can read a more detailed breakdown of each Frontier Pursuit on Rockstar’s website.

As you complete your Frontier Pursuit’s unique activities, you’ll earn Role XP that will help you unlock new Role Ranks. That, in turn, will net you Role Tokens, special items, new skills, and even role-specific Free Roam events. Each Frontier Pursuit has a startup cost of 15 Gold Bars, but Rockstar has detailed a couple of ways to get each role’s starting item for free on its website.

In addition to the Frontier Pursuits, Red Dead Online’s summer update introduces a litany of new items, clothing options, horse-drawn vehicles, and horse breeds. You can now also change your character’s appearance without resetting your progress, and Rockstar has added the ability to name any saved outfits.

On top of all the new content, PlayStation 4 players are getting another handful of timed-exclusive content. You can see the full list of those below. Meanwhile, all players who log into Red Dead Online between September 10 and November 18 will be automatically enrolled in the Wheeler, Rawson & Co. Club, which gives you access to new clothing, accessories, a special gun wrap, bonus cash, and more.

PS4 Timed-Exclusive Items

• American Foxhound Camp Dog
• Shoot The Sky Emote
• Three new Ability Cards
  • Gunslinger’s Choice
  • Strength in Numbers
  • Ride Like The Wind)
• Three new clothing items
  • Carrigan Hat
  • Burnham Boots
  • Avery Gloves

Finally, rounding out the update are a wealth of bug fixes and other gameplay improvements, including increased movement and animations speeds. You read more about the new Frontier Pursuits below, while the full patch notes for Red Dead Online’s summer update can be found on Rockstar’s support site.

RDR2 Title Update 1.11 Patch Notes

The world of Red Dead Online evolves with Frontier Pursuits – featuring three new Specialist Roles – each with their own unique paths and activities to help you forge new directions and carve out a life for yourself on the frontier:

Bounty Hunter:

• Become a Bounty Hunter for a life of constant action. A licensed Bounty Hunter can track down targets and capture – or kill, depending on how honorable you are in your pursuits. Occasionally, a nearby player with a high enough bounty can also be a designated target.

Trader:

• The life of a Trader is perfect for burgeoning capitalists as you establish and develop a business from your Camp. Thanks to your trusty companion Cripps’ knowledge of furs, skins and butchery, you’ll be able to take on new opportunities to collect materials and produce valuable goods to sell.

Collector:

• A Collector loves to explore the world for rare and valuable items. Look for a mystic travelling saleswoman in the wild to get started down the Collector’s path, searching for lost jewelry, rare arrowheads and other treasures to sell as individual pieces or highly valuable sets.

By 2016, the Terminator series wasn’t in good health. The fifth movie in the long-running sci-fi franchise, 2015’s Terminator: Genisys, had been a critical and commercial failure, and the planned sequels were suddenly in doubt. When it was reported that Terminator 6 had been removed from Paramount’s release schedule, it looked like fans might have to wait for a long time for everyone’s favourite time-travelling killer android to return to the screen.

But within a year, everything had changed. In September 2017, it was confirmed that not only was a new Terminator movie definitely happening, but the three people most associated with the series–creator James Cameron and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton–would be back too. With Deadpool director Tim Miller on board to direct, suddenly the series seemed to be back on track. The movie was given a summer 2019 release date–subsequently moved back to November–and the title was confirmed as Terminator: Dark Fate.

But it’s fair to say that for all the millions it has made at the box office, the Terminator series has not exactly maintained a consistent level of quality over the years. No one doubts the classic status of Cameron’s movies–The Terminator (1984) and T2: Judgment Day (1991)–but none of the subsequent three films are remotely in their league. In fact, for many fans, the best post-Cameron release from the series was not a movie at all, but the TV spin-off The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Nevertheless, hopes are high that Dark Fate can restore some glory to this 35-year-old series. The trailers so far are certainly action-packed, and the combination of new talent and series veterans will hopefully bring a mix of the familiar and the fresh. We’ll find out in November–in the meantime, here’s everything we know so far about Terminator: Dark Fate…

They’ll be back

The two biggest star names in the Terminator series are back for Dark Fate–Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton. While Arnold is always a welcome addition to a Terminator movie, it’s not that surprising that he might not appear; he’s been in every movie to date with the exception of 2009’s Terminator: Salvation, which had to make to do a CG-rendered younger Schwarzenegger. In Dark Fate, he’s playing the older version of the classic T-800, who now seems to live in the woods but is brought back to help our heroes with their mission.

Linda Hamilton is a bigger coup, as she has not played Sarah Connor since T2, and she remains one of the most iconic female action heroes of all time. Hamilton and Schwarzenegger will also be joined by a third star from the T2–Edward Furlong, who played the young John Connor. It’s been rumored that Furlong will appear as Connor as he did in T2, using de-aging technology to appear in flashbacks.

New faces

In terms of the new cast, Gabriel Luna plays Rev-9, the new main Terminator. Luna is best known for portraying Ghost Rider in the Marvel show Agents of SHIELD, and this latest version of the time-travelling killing machine has the ability to split into two seperate Terminator “units.” Colombian star Natalia Reyes takes on the role of Dani Ramos, who is the target of Rev-9, while Mackenzie Davis (Blade Runner 2049) plays Grace, a cybernetically enhanced soldier who must protect Dani.

Who’s the director?

Tim Miller is the director of Terminator: Dark Fate. This will be Miller’s second feature directing credit, following 2016’s hugely successful Deadpool. Miller had a previous career in visual effects, working on movies such as Thor: The Dark World and David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. He and Fincher also produced the recent Netflix animated anthology sci-fi series Love, Death & Robots.

King of the world

Let’s face it, if James Cameron wasn’t involved, we probably wouldn’t be getting another Terminator movie so soon after Genisys. After the planned Genisys sequels were cancelled, producer David Ellison approached Cameron about returning to the franchise to make something worthy of his original movies. Cameron agreed on the proviso that Schwarzenegger came back too, and in September 2017, it was confirmed that the filmmaker would indeed produce Dark Fate and oversee its storyline.

Back to the start

We’ve known for some time that Terminator: Dark Fate will be a direct sequel to T2. This is also the approach that last year’s hugely successful Halloween sequel/reboot took; ignoring all the badly received movies in-between to follow on directly from an acknowledged classic. Of course, this is no guarantee of quality, but Halloween proved that a narrative reset and a storyline focused on recapturing what made the original so popular can indeed produce a successful, popular movie.

What’s the story?

The official synopsis for Terminator: Dark Fate reads: “27 years after the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a new, modified liquid metal Terminator is sent from the future by Skynet in order to terminate Dani Ramos, a hybrid cyborg human, and her friends. Sarah Connor comes to their aid, as well as the original Terminator, for a fight for the future.”

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Miller explained that the movie will deal more directly with the effects of Connor’s actions in T2 than any of the other movies that have followed. “This will be more clear when you see the movie, but the first two movies really deal with time as a loop, what’s happening is the same thing that happened before and everybody is fighting to ensure that happens again,” he said. “And Jim had this lucky break that he only broke that rule at the end of Terminator 2 when Sarah destroys Cyberdyne, it’s the first thing that happened that hadn’t happened before, and so it was going to change the future–but no one knew how. And I don’t think the movies that came after it really explored that in a clean way like I believe we are, with true consequences.”

Is there a trailer?

There have been two action-packed two trailers released so far. The first appeared back in May, while the second was released in August.

What’s the release date?

Terminator: Dark Fate hits theaters on November 1 in the US, while UK audiences get it a week earlier, on October 23.

More to come?

A box office hits usually lead to more movies–and as Genisys proved, even a flop can’t stop a hugely recognisable franchise for long. Whatever happens, there’s little doubt that there will be more Terminator movies in the future, and if Dark Fate is a success, then it could happen sooner rather than later.

In August, Cameron told Deadline that he and the writers already have plans beyond this film. “We spent several weeks breaking story and figuring out what type of story we wanted to tell, so we would have something to pitch Linda,” he said. “We rolled up our sleeves and started to break out the story and when we got a handle on something we looked at it as a three-film arc, so there is a greater story to be told. If we get fortunate enough to make some money with Dark Fate, we know exactly where we can go with the subsequent films.”

Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reboot arrives in a little over a month, but players will soon have a chance to try it out ahead of its release. Activision is hosting a Modern Warfare open beta beginning this week on PS4, and if you’re eager to jump in, the beta client is now available to preload on Sony’s console.

The first Modern Warfare open beta session takes place on PS4 from September 14-16. However, if you’ve pre-ordered any edition of the game, you’ll be able to access the beta early on September 12 and 13. If you pre-ordered the game digitally, you can now grab the beta client from the PlayStation Store and preload it ahead of the first session; if you reserved a physical copy, you’ll receive a beta code via email. The client is a hefty download, weighing in at 27.52 GB.

The next Modern Warfare beta session begins on September 19. On that date, Xbox One and PC players who’ve pre-ordered the game (in addition to all PS4 players, whether or not you’ve pre-ordered it) will be able to participate in the beta. Finally, on September 21, the beta will expand to all PS4, Xbox One, and PC players until September 23.

The second beta session is notable because it gives players their first chance to try out cross-play in Modern Warfare. This year’s Call of Duty game is one of a small (but growing) handful of titles that support the feature, allowing players to play with each other across PS4, Xbox One, and PC. You can read more in our Modern Warfare beta roundup.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare launches on October 25. Unlike last year’s entry in the series, Black Ops 4, it will feature a traditional campaign; however, it probably won’t have a battle royale mode. If you’re interested in securing a copy, be sure to check out our Call of Duty: Modern Warfare pre-order guide.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Beta Details

PS4 Exclusive Beta Dates

• September 12-23 (Early Access, PS4)
• September 14-16 (Open beta, PS4)

Cross-Play Beta Dates

• September 19-20 (Early access, PC and Xbox One; open beta, PS4)
• September 21-23 (Open beta, PS4, Xbox One, and PC)