Month: September 2020

The CW’s sprawling DC superhero universe, the Arrowverse, is about to get a little smaller. Supergirl will be ending its run with Season 6, which is scheduled to premiere next year, GameSpot has confirmed. This is the second Arrowverse series to conclude following the franchise’s titular Arrow, which ended after 8 seasons earlier this year.

The show’s final season will include 20 episodes and will likely arrive at some point in the midseason of 2021, although no premiere date has been set. Production is scheduled to begin later this month.

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Microsoft’s announcement that its next generation would be called Xbox Series X and Series S got some amount of ribbing–what if people confuse it with the current-gen Xbox One X and One S? Now as the console preorders go live, there’s at least some indication that the naming scheme is leading to mistaken purchases.

According to Amazon’s “Movers & Shakers” chart in the video games category, Xbox One X sales are up 431% as of the time of writing. These kinds of percentage-based charts can be misleading, but that kind of sudden surge at least suggests that some consumers may be buying the system by mistake, intending to preorder the next-gen console. This is speculation, however, so we can’t make definitive conclusions.

There is no similar surge for Xbox One S on the charts. If product confusion were at issue it seems that may be happening too, as customers mistake the One S for the similarly named Series S.

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The news that Microsoft purchased Bethesda Softworks parent company ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion is shaking the video games industry, because it seems like a sea change for the release of the next generation of consoles. Suddenly, Microsoft owns not just Bethesda Game Studios, the maker of the hugely popular Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises, but a number of other studios–like Dishonored developer Arkane Studios, Doom developer id Software, and Wolfenstein developer MachineGames. That’s a heavy lineup of game-makers that, one assumes, will suddenly only be making games for future Xbox machines.

That’s the traditional way of thinking, anyway, and the strategy that has defined various iterations of “console wars” for the last three decades. We’re rapidly hitting the end of a generation greatly defined by exclusive games, or the lack thereof. It’s accepted at this point that Sony came out on top in the eighth generation, at least in competition with Microsoft, in large part because of major PS4 exclusive games such as Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and The Last of Us Part 2. Meanwhile, Microsoft had exclusives of its own, mostly first-party games like Gears 5, Halo 5: Guardians, Sea of Thieves, and Forza Horizon 4. But there always seemed to be fewer of them, receiving less acclaim, and with a longer drought between their releases.

So snagging the maker of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, as well as a bunch of other popular games, makes a lot of sense you were looking to build a stable of next-gen exclusives. But the way Xbox boss Phil Spencer has been talking lately, that might not necessarily be the play here. If we take Spencer’s word for it, the ZeniMax acquisition seems more like Microsoft building on a strategy that goes beyond locking players into a specific platform, in order to get them where they live–to sell them on a subscription service and to create bigger cross-platform player bases, instead of just relying on getting customers to commit to a console.

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Developer Nolla Games has announced that its action roguelike Noita, which we last checked out during GDC’s 2019 Indie Mix livestream, will leave Steam Early Access on October 15.

The 1.0 launch–available on PC via the GOG, Humble, Itch, and Steam stores–is Noita’s “biggest update yet,” according to Nolla Games. It includes new enemies, perks, music, and spells, as well as game improvements and bug fixes. The studio also said the update features “other surprises and perhaps a new game mode,” in addition to Twitch integration that lets viewers vote on in-game events during streams.

To celebrate the launch of Noita’s 1.0 release, Nolla Games is running a sale for the game on Steam. For the next 48 hours, Noita is 20 percent off, slashing the price from $20 to $16. The studio also shared a new announcement trailer, which you can check out below.

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After multiple delays due to the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon Prime Day is happening in just a few short weeks. Prime Day will begin on October 13, according to a report from GameSpot sister site CNET. So if you’ve been waiting to find great deals on tech, gaming, entertainment, and much more, you won’t have to wait much longer.

Amazon hasn’t officially confirmed the date, but the retailer tends to wait until the last minute to announce sale dates. It’s unclear at this time how long Prime Day will last, but 2019’s iteration of the sale took place over 48 hours. As usual, we’d expect all of the best deals to sell out before the sale ends, so you’ll want to browse Amazon first thing on October 13.

Since its debut in 2015, Prime Day has always been hosted in July. The coronavirus pandemic slowed all aspects of manufacturing and shipping to a crawl, which necessitated pushing back the sale. Amazon had initially planned to only delay the sale until August, but then wound up pushing it to September and then again to October. Now we have a finalized date, and hopefully the delays will lead to robust stock for all of the most sought-after products.

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Naughty Dog, the famed studio behind the critically acclaimed post-apocalyptic adventure The Last of Us and its 2020 sequel, has renamed Outbreak Day. From now on, it will be known as The Last of Us Day.

The decision comes in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the viral respiratory disease that has claimed more than 200,000 US lives. Given the nature of the outbreak, Naughty Dog said it didn’t feel right about the celebratory day being called Outbreak Day, especially in the context of current real-world conditions. As such, every September 26 will be called The Last of Us Day instead.

“For the last 7 years, September 26 has been our opportunity to recognize and celebrate the incredible passion of The Last of Us community,” Naughty Dog said in a statement. “However, as we thought about the events of the last year and the challenges we all continue to face with COVID-19, we didn’t feel right continuing on under the ‘Outbreak Day’ banner. While the name and date are rooted in the fiction of the game, September 26 means so much more than lore. It’s about showing our appreciation for our fans.

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