Month: October 2020

As we near the end of October, Black Friday 2020 news is starting to ramp up, and as usual, that means retailers have begun to “leak” their Black Friday ads previewing some of the best upcoming deals. The latest store to do so is Costco, a wholesale retailer that’s always one of the biggest players during Black Friday, offering extremely low prices on TVs, smart devices, tablets, and sometimes even gaming consoles. Leaked via BestBlackFriday.com, Costco’s Black Friday 2020 ad teases deals that will begin as early as November 5, running all the way through Thanksgiving weekend and into Cyber Monday. As usual, Costco stores will be closed on Thanksgiving Day (November 26), but online-exclusive deals will be available that day.

Costco Black Friday 2020 schedule

Costco’s Black Friday deals are broken into several batches, with the first two batches beginning November 5 and November 20. These are available both online and in stores, though please note that some deals have an early start date (sometimes exclusive to online)–these are indicated in the ad. Thanksgiving Day will feature online-only deals, including some of the best gaming deals. The final batch will become available on Black Friday itself and run through November 30 (Cyber Monday).

• November 5-19: First batch of online and warehouse savings
• November 20-30: Second batch of online and warehouse savings
• Thanksgiving Day: Online-only savings (stores closed)
• November 27-30: Final batch of online and warehouse savings

Costco’s best Black Friday 2020 deals

Costco has Black Friday deals in pretty much every category–you’ll find deals on everything from vacuum cleaners and dishwashers to Christmas trees and bags of chips. On the gaming and tech side, though, there are a few deals that caught our eye, which we’ve broken out below. Note that the ad doesn’t always indicate what the discount is and sometimes only gives the sale price–on 4K TVs, for instance, this could be because it’s a Black Friday-specific model.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Meet AMD’s newest graphics card, the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6800.

AMD came out swinging throwing down the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT’s big specs that includes 16GB of DDR6 video memory, 2015MHz Game Clock and 2250MHz Boost Clock, and 128MB Infinity Cache. With all this power the AMD Radeon RX 6800XT aims to deliver 4K gaming at the highest settings and it will compete directly with the Nvidia RTX 3080.

The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT will be $649 and the Radeon RX 6800 costs $579, both cards will release on November 18th.

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More to develop…

The Pathless, which is hitting PS5 on launch day, Nov. 12, alongside PS4, PC, and Apple Arcade, will be getting multiple physical editions, as well as a vinyl soundtrack release. It’s also now available to preorder digitally across all platforms.

Publisher Annapurna Interactive and developer Giant Squid have teamed up with iam8bit for one of the two physical releases for the game, available for preorder starting today and set for release on Dec. 8. They include:

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• iam8bit Exclusive Edition, which bundles a physical edition of the game, six art cards, a poster, and reversible exclusive cover art

• PlayStation 5 physical edition, featuring the six art cards

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The former can be preordered via iam8bit, while the physical PS5 edition can be bought from various retailers via Skybound Games.

Additionally, Annapurna and iam8bit have collaborated for a vinyl soundtrack for The Pathless, featuring Journey and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate composer Austin Wintory’s score. The vinyl includes 2 xLP gatefold jacket, cleansed blue and cursed red vinyl, album art by Elaine Lee, mastering by Townsend Mastering, and can currently be preordered from iam8bit.

IGN recently went hands-on with a PC build of The Pathless and came away impressed by its mix of Journey, Breath of the Wild, and some new movement and combat ideas. We also learned a bit about how The Pathless will use PS5’s DualSense controller.

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Jonathon Dornbush is IGN’s Senior News Editor, host of Podcast Beyond!, and PlayStation lead. Talk to him on Twitter @jmdornbush.

Call of the Sea was one of the more intriguing reveals at Microsoft’s third-party showcase back in May. It’s a first-person puzzle/adventure game set on a tropical island, in which you play a woman in 1934 investigating clues left by a previous voyage that caused her husband to go missing. Call of the Sea promises “an emotional, charming character study of a woman on a journey of self-discovery.” That woman, aka Norah, the protagonist you play as, is voiced by Cissy Jones, who you’ll remember from her award-winning performance as Delilah in 2017’s fantastic Firewatch.

Take a look at the opening 18 minutes of the game running on Xbox Series X in the video above. Call of the Sea is due out before the end of 2020 for Series X, Series S, Xbox One, and Windows PC.

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For more Xbox Series X coverage, check out our hands-on impressions of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Dirt 5, The Falconeer, and the Xbox Series X itself.

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Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.

Raven Software co-founder Brian Raffel has revealed details on the development of the classic shooter, Heretic, including a comment from id Software’s John Carmack that helped the team home in on the game’s signature style.

IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey sat down with Raffel to discuss Raven Software’s broad history in the latest episode of IGN Unfiltered, along with discussions on Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War, Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Hexen, Heretic, Soldier of Fortune, and more.

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Heretic has long been described as ‘medieval Doom’ or ‘fantasy Doom,’ and those are apt descriptions. When asked where the idea for Heretic came from, Raffel said, “The big story there is, [id] wanted to work with us. They wanted to do a fantasy game. It didn’t start out to be a ‘Doom fantasy.’ We started… typical D&D players, we first started designing the game and we got super deep into all this… you know… your Strength, Wisdom… all the usual stuff. And, of course, it’s a credit to John Carmack, here. He said, ‘Just do it like Doom, and add the fantasy flavor.'”

The fantasy setting isn’t the only notable departure from the Doom formula, however, as the game’s protagonist could also fly, a power Doom Guy could only dream of. “I have to call out Chris Rhinehart, who was one of our programmers at the time. Kind of a funny story about the flying… it’s so true, so many of these stories are these ‘happy accidents…’ Chris came up with the idea of moving the horizon line just up and down. It wasn’t a real calculation of flying, it was a hack… That was such a big event for us, and that gave us our unique flavor.”

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While Heretic did get several follow-ups, whether they carried the Heretic or Hexen name, Raffel did comment on the possibility of a modern series entry or reboot. “Never say never… We get a lot of requests for it, for sure and, of course, I’d always love to do it. That’s for another day, I guess… We’ll see.”

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In addition to his roles as Producer and Creative Director, Raffel humorously noted id Software co-founder John Romero bought the team at Raven their first work refrigerator, which was a big deal for them. “People don’t understand what game development was back then, but it was five guys in a basement. You go to Sam’s Club and get a case of Coke and chips, and you just sat at your desk all day… Those were fun days.”

For more interviews with the best, brightest, most fascinating minds in the games industry, check out be sure to check out every episode of IGN Unfiltered, which includes talks with The Game Awards creator Geoff Keighley, Master Chief co-creator Marcus Lehto, 343’s Bonnie Ross, Valve’s Robin Walker & Chris Remo, Respawn’s Stig Asmussen, and so many more.

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Brian Barnett writes wiki guides, deals posts, features, and much more for IGN. You can get your fix of Brian’s antics on Twitter and Instagram (@Ribnax).

Hot on the heels of its Ryzen 5000 series CPU announcement earlier in October, AMD has now revealed the full range of graphics cards that will make up its RX 6000 line. Dubbed Big Navi, these new GPUs are directly competing with Nvidia’s latest RTX 30- series, with the RTX 3070 launching soon.

AMD’s latest range starts with the new RX 6800XT, a massive card that features 16GB of GDDR6 memory, 72 compute units, a base clock of 2015MHz, and a boost clock of 2250MHz. It’s also less power hungry than Nvidia’s RTX 3080, requiring only 300W (a difference of 20W). The RX 6800 keeps the same 16GB of GDDR6 memory, but drops compute units down to 60 while also reducing base and boost clocks to 1815MHz and 2105MHz respectively.

AMD’s own benchmarks positions the RX 6800XT as a direct competitor to the RTX 3080, while the RX 6800 is compared to the older RTX 2080Ti. In both sets of results below there are instances where Nvidia’s cards are ahead, AMD is confident that its cards either match or better its competition in the majority of cases. AMD omitted any comparisons to the RTX 3070, but given its delayed launch date that isn’t too surprising.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Bugsnax has been confirmed as PlayStation 5’s first PlayStation Plus game in November 2020 alongside Middle-earth: Shadow of War and Hollow Knight: Voidheart Edition for PS4.

Announced on PlayStation.Blog, Bugsnax will be available to all new owners of PlayStation 5 on its launch day of November 12, 2020, and will be available until January 4, 2020. It’s important to note that Bugsnax for PS4 will not be available as a PlayStation Plus title.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War and Hollow Knight: Voidheart Edition will both be available on PlayStation Plus from November 3 to November 30, and will be playable on PS5 via backward compatibility.

Sony has also once again confirmed that its PlayStaion Plus Collection will be available with the launch of the PS5 and will give PlayStation Plus subscribers access to some of the best PS4 games with “benefits such as increased loading speed and improved or more stable framerates with PS5’s Game Boost.”

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PlayStation Plus Collection at PS5’s Launch

SIE Worldwide Studios:

• Bloodborne
• Days Gone
• Detroit: Become Human
• God of War
• Infamous Second Son
• Ratchet and Clank
• The Last Guardian
• The Last of Us Remastered
• Until Dawn
• Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

Third-Party Publishers and Developers:

• Batman: Arkham Knight
• Battlefield 1
• Call of Duty: Black Ops III – Zombies Chronicles Edition
• Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
• Fallout 4
• Final Fantasy XV Royal Edition
• Monster Hunter: World
• Mortal Kombat X
• Persona 5
• Resident Evil 7 biohazard

These games will be an added benefit of the existing PlayStation Plus subscription and will come without an additional fee. Once a game is redeemed, it can be kept for as long as your subscription is active.

It also appears that the game list for the PlayStation Plus Collection has changed a bit from its announcement, as games like Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy, Call of Duty: Black Ops III – Zombies Chronicles Edition have been added.

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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.