Month: January 2021

To celebrate the franchise’s 25th anniversary, Pokemon is teaming up with popular musical artists including Katy Perry to create the soundtrack for its year of anniversary festivities.

Starting in March with the Galar region, the Pokemon Company will be taking a look at a past Pokemon region each month. There will also be various events, promotions, and merchandise released throughout the year to celebrate this landmark anniversary.

To tease these upcoming festivities, and its collaboration with Perry, the Pokemon Company has released a special video that’s a major nostalgia trip. It follows a sort of Pokemon-themed Rube Goldberg machine launching Poke Balls through various city and landscapes, complete with Game Boy cartridges toppling like dominoes, holographic trading cards, and all the plushies you could imagine. Detective Pikachu even makes a cameo.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

The Division developer Ubisoft Massive is making a Star Wars game with Lucasfilm Games that aims to be a “story-driven” title that leverages the studio’s history and experience. While the developer is keeping quiet about what the game will actually be, a pair of higher-ups at the studio have now discussed the project and confirmed that the work being done on this game will happen in conjunction with the ongoing development of its Avatar game coming in 2022.

Massive managing director David Polfeldt said in an interview with Ubisoft that the studio is big enough these days to accomodate multiple AAA projects, so fans eagerly awaiting the Avatar game for 2022 need not worry.

“We have been preparing the studio for a long time to handle all our projects with equal attention and love,” he said. “Since all our teams work on the Snowdrop engine, all projects benefit from each other’s progress and successes. And obviously, with such an amazing collection of triple-A projects under one roof, we are continuously recruiting, and we’re currently looking for experienced developers from all over the world to join us on our future adventures.”

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MSI’s Stealth 15M is the world’s thinnest 15-inch gaming laptop and comes equipped with a brand-new Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card.

Revealed during CES 2021, the Stealth 15M also comes with the latest 11th Gen Intel Tiger Lake H35 with Next Technology. As previously mentioned, it is also the thinnest 15-inch laptop at only 16mm and weighs 1.7kg (3.7lbs).

The RTX 3060 graphics cards that are included in the Stealth 15M were also revealed during CES 2021 and bring next-gen level graphics of NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture to a wider audience to provide ray tracing, DLSS, and much more.

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As for cooling, the Stealth 15M features the Cooler Boost 5 that is a dedicated thermal solution for both the CPU and GPU with 2 fans and up to 6 heat pipes. It also promises up to 9 hours of battery life, making it a good travel companion.

Furthermore, it has MSI RGB lighting, USB-C, HDMI, and Thunderbolt 4 ports, a built-in webcam, Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201, and so much more. Its IPS display is also FHD (1920×1080) and has a refresh rate of 144Hz.

The MSI Stealth 15M starts at $1,399 USD and comes in either Carbon Grey or White.

Make sure to check out our roundup of the biggest announcements at CES 2021 for more breaking news.

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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.

Today, Lucasfilm Games and Ubisoft Massive announced the two companies are working together on a new open-world, story-driven Star Wars game, and have started a “long-term collaboration”. But what does this mean for EA’s multi-year licensing deal on Star Wars games? According to EA, the company will still work with Lucasfilm Games on Star Wars projects “for years to come”.

EA released a statement about its future with the Star Wars brand following today’s news that Ubisoft will be working on a brand new Star Wars game with the newly formed Lucasfilm Games.

“We are proud of our long-standing collaboration with Lucasfilm Games, which will continue for years to come,” EA said in a statement. “Our talented teams have created some of the most successful games in the history of the Star Wars franchise, including Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Star Wars: Battlefront, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes and Star Wars: Squadrons. We love Star Wars and look forward to creating more exciting experiences for players to enjoy.”

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Earlier today, Lucasfilm Games made clear that it would continue to work with EA, and said that there were “a number of projects underway with the talented teams at EA”. One of those projects is presumably a sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, after EA made clear that the first game was intended as the start of a new franchise.

In 2013, EA and Star Wars agreed to a multi-year deal which gave EA the exclusive rights to publish core Star Wars video games developed by its internal studios. No comment has been given on how or when that deal was altered.

Earlier this week, Disney announced the formation of Lucasfilm Games, which will house all Star Wars games under a single banner. It subsequently announced that MachineGames and Bethesda are working on an Indiana Jones game under the Lucasfilm Games brand, too.

With a new game in development at Ubisoft, it appears that Lucasfilm Games will now work with a variety of developers and publishers on creating new Star Wars games and more – seemingly closer in approach to the Marvel Games brand.

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The EA partnership led to several games including Star Wars: Battlefront 1 and 2 from DICE, Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order from Respawn, and Star Wars: Squadrons from EA Motive. There were also cancelled projects that never materialized, including Amy Hennig’s Project Ragtag which was in development at the now shuttered Visceral Games.

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Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN.

2020 had no shortage of games on offer, and with two next-gen console launches arriving at the end of last year, gamers were spoiled for choice when it came to choosing which games to play on those new systems. In a year that also saw more people stay at home rather than risk contracting the coronavirus, digital sales increased in 2020 as people opted to obtain games along safer online avenues. Now, Sony has released a list of the top-selling games on the PlayStation Store in the US and Canada.

Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War was the most downloaded PS5 game of the year according to Sony, with Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla earning the second and third spots respectively. The rest of the top ten on Sony’s next-gen console were all a mixture of dependable annual franchise entries and brand new games, which you can see in the list below:

Most downloaded PS5 games of 2020

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
2. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
3. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
4. NBA 2K21
5. Demon’s Souls
6. Madden NFL 21
7. FIFA 21
8. Sackboy: A Big Adventure
9. Immortals Fenyx Rising
10. Watch Dogs: Legion

With PS5 stock being in high demand and short supply, there was still plenty of life left in the last-gen console for those consumers who didn’t take a next-gen plunge. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War also claimed the number one position on the PS4 top ten downloads of 2020 list, while Grand Theft Auto V took second place. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare took the third spot, Minecraft came in at fourth, and Ghost of Tsushima—Sony’s fastest-selling new IP–was the fifth most downloaded PS4 game of the year. You can see the rest of the list below:

Continue Reading at GameSpot

We’re a little over a month away from the release of Persona 5 Strikers, the new crossover that combines the world of Persona with Dynasty Warriors-style action gameplay. Persona 5 Strikers releases on February 23 for PS4/PS5, Nintendo Switch, and PC. If you’re planning on picking it up for PC, you can save on your preorder right now. Fanatical is selling Steam keys for both the standard edition and Deluxe edition at discounted prices.

Strikers has hack-and-slash combat, but you can still pause time to strategize and utilize skills. It sets up as more of a crossover than games like Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and Fire Emblem Warriors. The story takes place after the events of Persona 5 and will have a strong emphasis on social simulation just like the mainline games.

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The latest update for the battle royale game Call of Duty: Warzone has arrived, delivering with it further weapon balance changes–including another update to the DMR 14–as well as a fix for a key issue pertaining to stims.

Developer Raven Software released the patch notes on Twitter but quickly deleted the post, but not before CharlieIntel captured the patch notes. Raven Software has since reinstated the patch notes, and you can see them below.

For the DMR 14, the patch increases the recoil slightly, while bullet penetration is decreased as well. The burst pistol, meanwhile, sees its max damage reduced by 11 percent.

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The Walking Dead Season 10 didn’t exactly pan out how the makers originally intended. The pandemic shut down production before shooting was finished on the season, and it ended up airing in April last year without the final episode. That episode was finally screened in October, and the season will now complete its run with an additional six episodes from next month. A new teaser for these episodes has now been released.

Like previous Walking Dead promos, this teaser is very stylised and offers some clues about what to expect from the upcoming episodes. While we don’t see any footage, the teaser promises “six new stories, one shared fate,” and there’s a variety of voiceovers from characters such as Daryl, Judith, Carol, and Negan. Check it out below:

The Walking Dead returns to AMC on February 28. In September last year, showrunner Angela Kang explained that the six new episodes would focus on separate characters, allowing the production to continue under COVID-safe conditions.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Hot on the heels of Nintendo’s monstrous new trailer for Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury, the company has released a lengthier features overview trailer detailing just what we can expect from the upcoming game.

For starters, the new video shows off the online co-op mode with up to four players in the main 3D World game. As in the original release, each player can claim a different character with their own strength: Mario is an all-arounder, Luigi can high-jump, Peach floats, and Toad can dash. It also shows a new feature, a photo mode that lets you snap pictures, complete with filters and insertable stamps.

The overview trailer also drops new details about the Bowser’s Fury component. The open-world segment has you collecting Cat Shines scattered throughout the environment. You’ll have Bowser Jr. as an automated AI companion, but a second player can join in and take over as Bowser Jr. at any time. Bowser will wake up and cause havoc on the island, changing the landscape significantly. Ultimately your goal is to collect enough Cat Shines to earn the Giga Bell, a giant-sized Cat Mario power-up that makes him super-sized to take on the gigantic Bowser.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Lucasfilm Games has announced an open world Star Wars game from Ubisoft and an Indiana Jones game from Bethesda in the last two days – but it’s not done yet, with more announcements to come this year, some of which will apparently be unexpected.

On StarWars.com, Lucasfilm Games VP Douglas Reilly explains that the recent Lucasfilm Games rebrand, “Is really the culmination of years of preparing to come out and say, ‘We’re here, we’ve got a team of people, we’re going to make a lot of great games, and here’s some new things you weren’t expecting from us to do that we’re now starting to do.’

“And that’s going to continue throughout the next year or so, where we’re going to continue to announce projects that are more representative of the legacy of the old Lucasfilm Games that we’re now trying to live up to.”

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Those games will include Star Wars projects from EA, who previously held that license exclusively. “While we may not have a lot of details to share at the moment,” says Reilly, “we’ve got a number of projects underway with the talented teams at EA.”

And it’s not just about a slate of games in development already – it’s clear that Lucasfilm Games is now accepting pitches for games based on its licenses, too: “We’re looking to work with best-in-class teams that can make great games across all of our IP,” Reilly continues.

“We’ve got a team of professionals here at Lucasfilm Games who can work with the developers, shape the stories, shape the creative, shape the games, to make them really resonate with fans and deliver across a breadth of platforms, genres, and experiences so that all of our fans can enjoy the IPs that they know and love.”

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In the course of half a week, Star Wars games, and Lucasfilm games as a whole, feel like a far more open proposition, with the possibility of many different developers’ take on the source material. What comes of this new approach is yet to be seen, but Reilly makes clear that it may not be too long until we see more, saying, “This is just the beginning of what I think is going to be a very exciting year for Lucasfilm Games.”

As for what we already know, Lucasfilm Games is a new brand covering Star Wars games and beyond, created by multiple developers and publishers. So far, that includes an Indiana Jones game from MachineGames (Wolfenstein: The New Order), and a story-driven open world Star Wars game from Ubisoft Massive (The Division).

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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.