Month: February 2021

As part of Electronic Arts’ earnings report, the company shared some details on the next Battlefield game. Management said the game will offer “all-out military warfare” and support more players than ever before for the Battlefield series.

The current player cap for Battlefield is 32 v 32, so presumably this new Battlefield game will offer something more. EA also said the new Battlefield game will offer more player agency, but the company did not elaborate on what that means.

What’s more, this new game is tracking ahead of EA’s own internal milestones. EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said the new game is scheduled to reach “feature complete” status faster than any other Battlefield game in franchise history.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Apex Legends is coming to Switch on March 9, following the start of Season 8: Mayhem. Season 8 is currently live, implementing several balancing adjustments (as listed in the update’s patch notes) and adding playable character Fuse, the 30-30 Repeater Rifle, and map changes to Kings Canyon.

“Porting Apex Legends to its smallest screen yet is a major achievement, and we couldn’t have done it without our partners at Panic Button,” Apex Legends game director Chad Grenier said in a press release. “We’re very proud of what the team has been able to achieve with some smart optimizations for the Switch port to deliver a full-featured Apex Legends experience on the go.”

The Switch version of Apex Legends supports all the existing content and features on the Xbox One, PS4, and PC versions of the game. This includes cross-play support, so Switch owners will be folded into Apex Legends’ overall player pool as opposed to existing separately.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Pokemon Go‘s Lunar New Year event is returning from February 9-14. The event will feature a line of Timed Research tasks revolving around Tauros, as well as increased spawns of red-colored Pokemon and other in-game bonuses.

Throughout the Lunar New Year event, Krabby, Goldeen, Magmar, Magikarp, Tepig, and other red-colored Pokemon will appear in the wild more frequently than usual. Gyarados will also be appearing, and you’ll have a chance to encounter a Shiny red Gyarados.

In addition to the wild Pokemon spawns, Pokemon that are based on animals associated with Lunar New Year–such as Ekans, Rattata, Torchic, Ponyta, and others–will be hatching from 5 km eggs throughout the event. You’ll also have a chance to encounter the following Pokemon in Raid Battles:

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The Monster Hunter movie will be heading for a home-video release on digital on February 16 according to a tweet from the film’s official Twitter account, with the Blu-ray release to follow on March 2. These releases will reportedly include “deleted scenes, a featurette on the cast and characters, a featurette on the weaponry in the film, and a featurette detailing the journey from video game to the big screen.”

The movie was one of the handful of movies whose release date was actually moved up in 2020, which now means fans will have an even shorter wait to finally own the film later this month. We weren’t blown away by the film, but video game movies are consistently polarizing even among fans who are interested in such things. What was always clear–and nobody can argue against–is that director Paul W.S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat in 1995) set out to make audiences feel like they were in the game.

That much comes across in the film’s official synopsis: “Behind our world, there is another: a world of dangerous and powerful monsters that rule their domain with deadly ferocity. When an unexpected sandstorm transports Captain Artemis (Milla Jovovich) and her unit (T.I. Harris, Meagan Good, Diego Boneta) to a new world, the soldiers are shocked to discover that this hostile and unknown environment is home to enormous and terrifying monsters immune to their firepower.” The trio are joined by a mysterious hunter (Tony Jaa), who band together to fight for and save each other’s worlds.

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Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is stepping down from his role as the chief executive of the mega-corporation. He announced that he will transition to a new role as executive chair on the Board of Directors. Andy Jassy, the former CEO of Amazon Web Services and a 23-year-plus veteran, will take over as CEO of Amazon going forward.

“In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence,” Bezos said.

Bezos also reflected on his life and career in his email to staffers, which was also published online.

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Activision has begun banning Call of Duty Warzone cheaters in what’s reportedly one of the biggest waves of bans ever for the game.

This time, the company banned more than 60,000 cheaters in the latest drop of its banhammer, according to Vice, which learned of this wave of bans from three sources familiar with Activision. This is the third large wave of bans since the game’s launch last year. Over 50,000 players were banned in the first wave last April and an additional 20,000 last September.

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This ban comes just a day after popular Warzone streamer, Vikkstar123, announced that he would no longer play the game, as noted by Vice. He echoed sentiments found throughout the Warzone streaming community at the moment that the game is in the worst state it’s ever been in due to hackers and cheaters.

Sources close to Vice said this ban wave targeted cheaters using EngineOwning as all EngineOwning account holders using the software to cheat in the game have been “wiped out.” On EngineOwning’s site, the cheat developers say they are working to update the cheat, according to Vice.

Meanwhile, the EngineOwning Discord channel is full of account owners upset that their accounts have been banned by Activision.

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This ban wave came somewhat out of nowhere considering that Activision previously warned of incoming ban waves before actually dropping the hammer in past instances. Activision laid out at that time what software they consider worthy of a ban and it included “aimbots, wallhacks, trainers, stats hacks, texture hacks, leaderboard hacks, injectors, hex editors or any software used to deliberately modify game data or memory.”

For more Warzone, check out this trailer of the first season featuring content from Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and then read about how the battle royale has helped the series earn $3 billion over the last 12 months.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes. 

Amazon has announced that CEO and founder Jeff Bezos will resign from his position during the third quarter of 2021, and will transition to executive chair of Amazon’s board. Amazon Web Services (AWS) CEO Andy Jassy will replace Bezos, according to CNBC.

“I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO,” Bezos wrote in a statement sent to employees. “In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.”

Bezos continued his statement saying that he will use his new role as executive chair of Amazon’s board to focus on initiatives like Amazon’s Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, the Washington Post, and others.

Bezos originally founded Amazon in 1994, growing what began as an online bookstore into a massive online retailer that competes in numerous sectors, including food delivery, technology, and movie and television streaming. Amazon passed a $1 trillion market cap in 2020 under Bezos’ leadership.

Bezos is worth approximately $182 billion as of last December, according to NPR, making him the wealthiest person on the planet.

Jassy joined Amazon in 1997. He has directed work on Amazon Web Services since its launch in 2006. AWS provides a wide variety of cloud computing and API services to individuals and companies, including data storage, networking, developer tools, and more. To give you an idea of how important AWS had become to Amazon’s success, CNBC reports that AWS accounted for 52% of Amazon’s operating income in October 2020.

AWS supports various game developers’ operations, including Clash of Clans’ developer Supercell, Borderlands 3’s Gearbox Software, and Monster Hunter World’s Capcom.

Amazon’s forays into first-party video game development have gone considerably less successful in the past year, with their free-to-play team shooter Crucible shutting down in November last year. An extensive report from Bloomberg in January shed light on Amazon Game Studios’ alleged culture of sexual discrimination and mismanagement.

Amazon’s game streaming platform, Amazon Luna, is also currently in beta. Amazon’s MMO, New World, is expected to launch in Spring 2021.

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After stepping further away from day-to-day operations at Amazon, Bezos found himself pulled back in due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the logistical complications that arose as a result, according to the New York Times.

Bezos has also been criticized numerous times in the past for anti-worker policies, including aggressively monitoring employee behavior to stop unionization efforts, according to CNBC.

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Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.