Month: March 2020

Super Mega Baseball 3 has been announced for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam, with the first trailer revealing that the game will launch in April 2020. The third game in the well-liked baseball series adds a new Franchise mode, interface upgrades, and more detailed graphics. It’s developed by Metalhead Studios, which also developed the first two games in the series.

Franchise mode is the big draw, as it lets you play across multiple seasons and deal with players who develop, age, and retire, as well as signing and releasing members of your team. You’ll be able to customize the length and structure of your seasons and create your own teams.

This sounds like the major new single-player addition; if you take the game online, you’ll be able to compete cross-platform in Pennant Race mode, climbing up the division ranks as you go.

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Activision Blizzard, one of the biggest publishers in gaming, has announced a major leadership change. The company has hired veteran Google executive Daniel Alegre to become its new president and chief operating officer, effective April 7, 2020.

He will replace Coddy Johnson, the former Bush-Cheney field director who became Activision Blizzard’s president in 2017 after more than seven years with the company before that. Johnson will transition to a new “special advisor” role where he will report to Activision Blizzard CEO Kotick.

In his position as president and COO of Activision Blizzard, Alegre will oversee all of the company’s major business units: Activision Publishing, Blizzard Entertainment, and King Digital. He will report directly to Kotick.

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Call of Duty: Warzone, the free-to-play Call of Duty battle royale game set in the Modern Warfare universe, is off to a very good start. Activision has confirmed that more than 6 million people played Warzone over its first 24 hours.

“Thank you — we’re just getting started,” the tweet says, referring to developer Infinity Ward and Raven Software’s plan to update and support the game with more content and events over time.

For comparison, Titanfall developer Respawn’s battle royale game, Apex Legends, hit 2.5 million players over its first 24 hours. That’s not a terrific comparison, however, as Call of Duty is an established franchise while Apex Legends was a new IP that no one knew about.

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CinemaCon, the film industry’s largest trade show gathering of theater owners from around the world, has been canceled due to concerns over the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, organizers announced Wednesday.

The event, which was to have taken place from March 30-April 2, 2020 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, would have seen the major studios touting their upcoming films to exhibitors along with appearances by a bevy of stars there to promote their next films.

“It is with great regret we are announcing the cancellation of CinemaCon 2020,” National Association of Theatre Owners president John Fithian and CinemaCon organizer Mitch Neuhauser said in a statement.

“Each spring, motion picture exhibitors, distributors and industry partners from around the world meet in Las Vegas to share information and celebrate the moviegoing experience. This year, due to the travel ban from the European Union, the unique travel difficulties in many other areas of the world and other challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic, a significant portion of the worldwide motion picture community is not able to attend CinemaCon.”

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CinemaCon‘s cancellation is the latest major entertainment industry event to be nixed in the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak. Earlier today came the official news that E3 had been canceled. Previously, the SXSW festival was canceled and Coachella was postponed.

The NBA also postponed the remainder of the current season due to Utah Jazz player Rudy Gobert testing positive for the virus.

Hollywood’s reaction to the COVID-19 virus has varied from the major studios largely staying the course on their big upcoming releases to films such as No Time to Die and Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway having their release dates postponed just weeks from when they were slated to be released.

The global film industry has been roiled by the spreading viral outbreak, with Italy under quarantine and cinemas across China closed indefinitely.

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For more of our coverage on how Hollywood is responding to COVID-19, discover what a high-ranking studio exec and box office analysts said about its potential impact on the industry and find out if medical experts think postponing a film’s release will make a difference.

Fans of the KONOSUBA anime will be happy to hear that the first KONOSUBA movie, KONOSUBA: Legend Of Crimson, will be coming to Crunchyroll for streaming on March 25.

The movie is a direct sequel to the second season of the anime KONOSUBA, where an otaku named Satou Kazuma is reborn into a magical world after sacrificing himself to save the life of someone else. In this world he is offered up a special gift to make his transition to magical life easier, and he chooses to take the Goddess Aqua with him as a guide, only to soon find out she isn’t all that helpful.

The two struggle to get by in this new world. They’re joined by a young wizard who can only cast explosion magic once before passing out, and a masochistic knight who can’t hit anything. The gang party up and go on various adventures together, generally ending in some kind of catastrophe for Kazuma.

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Call of Duty: Warzone is off to a great start, with over 6 million players in its first 24 hours, and plenty of happy players. But Warzone–which is technically still in Beta–was always bound to have some hiccups, too, and one pair of players has found a big one.

The video below, which was posted to Reddit by the user who recorded it, shows two players winning a Warzone match by staying outside the safe zone and repeatedly reviving each other until the match ends. Once every other player is eliminated, they win by default.

The title of the video, and the Reddit post, ask for this issue to please be fixed–it’s potentially game-ruining, and it’s been posted to raise awareness of the bug. As such, we can’t imagine it’ll be possible to pull off this tactic for too long once Activision is aware of it. After all, the first patch rolled out very soon after launch.

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For those of you who use an NVIDIA compatible GeForce NOW graphics card, you’ll be glad to hear that NVIDIA has expanded the list games supported by the streaming service, which lets players experience tech beyond what is available in their PCs, by seven.

The seven games included in the update can be seen in the tweet above. This brings the total amount of supported games to a whooping 527. As long as you own these games in their respective digital libraries, you can use NVIDIA GeForce NOW to launch them and run them with NVIDIA GeForce NOW selecting the best settings for your PC.

NVIDIA GeForce NOW is constantly updating their library of supported games, so keep checking back in regularly to check if the one you want has been added, or removed.

Call of Duty: Warzone, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s free-to-play battle royale mode, has been played by over 6 million players in its first 24 hours.

Call of Duty revealed the news on Twitter, celebrating its first day since releasing the long-rumored mode into the wild.

It will be interesting to see how Warzone fairs in its first week, and see if it can come close to Call of Duty: Mobile’s record breaking 100 million downloads.

For comparison, Apex Legends drew in 2.5 million players in its first 24 hours back in February 2019 and reached 10 million its first 3 days.

Call of Duty: Warzone released on March 10 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC and includes two modes: Plunder and a 150-player battle royale mode.

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It stands apart from other battle royale titles like Fortnite and Apex Legends with such features as the Gulag, which allows eliminated players to battle another 1v1 for a chance at a second life.

Warzone supports crossplay between consoles and PC and allows players to carry their progress wherever they choose to play.

For more on Call of Duty: Warzone, be sure to check out our Tips and Tricks wiki to learn successful strategies, especially if you are new to the battle royale game.

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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

The next expansion for Two Point Hospital, Off The Grid, will be available for PC via Steam on March 18. It will add 35 new diseases and three new areas to explore and build up hospitals within, and it’ll encourage players to devise hospitals where patients can live off the land.

The DLC is based on Two Point County mayor Tabitha Windsock’s ecological ambitions, and players will be able to grow produce, churn butter, and eventually harness green energy to power their hospital in Windsock City. It looks like a unique twist on the standard Two Point Hospital gameplay.

The DLC will sell on Steam for $9, with a 10% pre-purchase discount currently active. A trailer is below.

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