Yes, we want to do this. It's in the long list of cool things the xCloud team is working on, just a bit further down the list. But we want console and PC players to be able to browse as easily as mobile players, it's a good gamepass feature.

Universal Studios Japan will now open its Super Nintendo World area in spring 2021.

The Mario-themed area was ready to go this summer, in time for Tokyo to host the 2020 Summer Olympics, before both were postponed due to the ongoing global health crisis.

Super Nintendo World includes areas themed around Princess Peach's Castle and Bowser's Castle, with giant warp pipes, mushrooms and floating clouds. There are rides themed around Yoshi and Mario Kart, and an electronic wristband which tracks your progress via a free app as you explore.

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Microsoft is working on bringing xCloud to PC and Xbox via Game Pass.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer took to Twitter to respond to a question asking if the cloud gaming service will at some point let Xbox Game Pass subscribers demo games instead of having to download them.

"Yes, we want to do this," Spencer replied.

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My opinion of Star Wars: Squadrons is all over the place. I was excited when it was announced, as I’d been yearning for a proper Star Wars flight sim for years. But then I reined in my expectations, because my bland triple-A release sense was tingling. I played a few hours of Squadrons as soon as it launched, and finished my session feeling a bit nonplussed.

It's never like Fire Emblem Heroes to miss a seasonal celebration, and Halloween is no exception. Nintendo's mobile battler will be releasing its newest update later this week, bringing a quartet of costumed fools to the gacha title's massive roster of warriors.

The Dragon's Harvest update will see the arrival of Awakening's Robin, Mystery of the Emblem's Xane, Path of Radiance' Dheginsea, and finally Harmonized Heroes Tiki & Ninian, all of whom are sporting very cute Halloween costumes. Dheginsea makes for a formidable vampire, and Xane is a colourful trickster, while the girls also look great as... umm... these things... a werewolf, I guess? And a ghost and a devil?

Even the most die-hard Wraith main will admit the Apex Legends character is, as the kids say, a bit of an edge lord - but that's part of her appeal. One of her most iconic features has been her "Naruto run" sprint animation, a running style named after the Naruto anime in which the character leans forwards with their arms outstretched behind them. In real life, it's completely impractical and will likely result in you falling on your face, but it seems to have given Wraith an advantage in Apex Legends - and as a result, it's now been removed.

The patch notes for Aftermarket, the latest Apex Legends update that rolled out yesterday, explained that the dev team had been struggling to nerf Wraith for some time, and previous changes to her abilities had not been enough to balance the character. "Each time we hit her abilities (which we've done a lot) she bounces back within a few weeks without bleeding a lot of pick rate," the notes said. "We think both she and Pathfinder have been pushed to the edge in terms of cooldown and utility nerfs where pushing them any further would make them a lot less fun to play. We don't want that!

"So we started looking at other Legend specific things that could give her this power- and discovered that her sprinting animations are unique in how much they artificially shorten her (by hunching over), thus shrinking her shootable area from the perspective of the enemy. It doesn't sound like a lot, but taken together with her already small hitbox, it's a lot of power."

Amazon Echo Show 5 + Blink Mini | $50 | Amazon Prime Day Exclusive

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You’d think that the arrival of Nvidia’s [cms-block] and the imminent announcement of AMD’s [cms-block] GPUs would result in a spate of great graphics card deals from retailers looking shift old stock, but alas, you’d be wrong. Indeed, with prices either staying the same or going up, now is not a great time to be buying a new graphics card.

Still, if you simply cannot wait and are in desperate need of a new GPU, then I’ve gathered together all the cheapest graphics card deals from around the web right now so you can see exactly how they stack up against the competition. I’ll also tell you exactly what each card is capable of when it comes to gaming performance, and how much prices have changed week-on-week. As I said, you should almost certainly wait a few weeks before you buy a new GPU if you can help it (or at least see what [cms-block] might bring next week), but here’s how things currently stand for those who need one right this second.

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A big new report by the Democrat-led US House of Representatives has slammed Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google for what it describes as "monopolistic" practices - and perhaps most notably, criticised Apple's 30 per cent App Store cut.

That cut is, of course, a key issue in the ongoing Epic Games versus Apple lawsuit, a case which looks likely to drag on well into next year.

At 449 pages, the report takes its time to argue each of the aforementioned companies controls the lion's share of their particular market, be it Apple's mobile operating system, Google's online search and advertising, Facebook's social network and advertising, or Amazon's dominance over the online retail market.

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Larian Studios launched Baldur’s Gate 3 into early access last night, and were quite clear that the fantasy RPG might have a few issues needing fixing. And yup, it does. Multiplayer has particularly been a problem for some folks, with several issues causing crashes. The developers, Larian Studios say they’re working to release a hotfix patch for pressing problems “as soon as possible” but, for now, they warn of what not to do.

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Listen to orchestrated arrangements of Tifa's theme, Shrina Inc.'s theme, and more with this new album.

The post Final Fantasy VII Remake Orchestral Arrangement Album Available in Japan appeared first on Siliconera.

Genshin Impact censors a number of words, including Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The issue was brought to light by journalist Kazuma Hashimoto, who published a video on Twitter showing how the free-to-download Breath of the Wild-esque PC, PlayStation 4 and mobile game censors Taiwan and Hong Kong within its chat.

According to PC Gamer, Genshin Impact also censors the words Putin, Hitler, Stalin and Falun Gong.

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The 5th volume of Grisaia Phantom Trigger will be available for the Nintendo Switch on November 19, 2020.

The post Grisaia Phantom Trigger 05 Switch Launches on November 19, 2020 appeared first on Siliconera.

It’s been a real blast over the last few weeks watching my pals and peers pick up Hades. The excellent mythological roguelike left early access last month, and seeing everyone post screenshots of their first clears and fastest times has been lovely. To any of you who think you’ve gotten good at the game with those cheeky 20-minute runs, however, I’m here to ruin your day. While we’re all scraping by the final boss clutching onto our final Death Defiances, speedrunners are already breezing their way through Hades in under eight minutes.

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Constantin Film has announced its intention to create a brand new Resident Evil movie, one that will seemingly ignore all of the events of previous films past to adapt an all-new cinematic story based on the legendary survival horror series.

Written and directed by 47 Meters Down's Johannes Roberts, the new movie will see the action return to the iconic locale of Raccoon City, retelling the events of one grim night in the Spencer Mansion. Constantin Film has unveiled a cast of characters, including Upload's Robbie Amell as Chris Redfield, Maze Runner's Kaya Scodelario as Claire Redfield, Avan Jogia as Leon Kennedy, and Hannah John-Kamen - who you will remember as Ghost in Ant-Man and the Wasp - in the heralded role of Jill Valentine. A real all-star set of Resi heroes right there.

Speaking to Deadline, Roberts said of the project "I really wanted to go back to the original first two games and re-create the terrifying visceral experience I had when I first played them whilst at the same time telling a grounded human story about a small dying American town that feels both relatable and relevant to today’s audiences."

The new film will be produced by Robert Kulzer, who was also the producer for the 2002 Resident Evil movie, as well as sequels Resident Evil: Extinction, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, thus the new film may not entirely eschew the style of its previous cinematic universe - for better or worse.

Resident Evil is currently in pre-production at Constantin Film.

Remember Nasne? The Japan-only DVR was released back in 2012 primarily for the PlayStation 3 and the Vita. Later, it got an update for the PS4 but was finally phased out last year.

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In an unusual move, Nintendo will tonight revive its E3 Treehouse broadcasts for a deep dive into two upcoming Switch games.

Tune in at 6pm UK time for an extended peek at the promising looking Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, and the long-awaited Pikmin 3 Deluxe.

It's a little odd we're getting this now, in October, when these kind of deep dives are usually provided during the day at E3 in June. But this is 2020, so what is normal anymore. (Pikmin 3, at least, was due to be announced and detailed much earlier in the year, I understand.)

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The world is pretty crazy right now, with some theme parks open and some...not so much. But Nintendo and Universal are still moving full speed ahead with Super Nintendo World of Japan, having gotten back on the construction horse earlier this year.

Now the fruits of their labor are seemingly ready to be unleashed, as Nintendo has just announced officially that Super Nintendo World will arrive in Osaka City in the spring of 2021. But before that grand opening, Nintendo will cut the ribbon for the Mario Cafe and Store, which is scheduled to be unleashed on October 16.

At that point guests can buy various Mario merch, as well as "Super Mushroom Drinks" (in a collectible cup) and fruit cream sodas (with mustache straws). Mario and Luigi cap cookies will also be on sale, and the tagline that the store is going for is "Whose Cap?" Cheeky. We know who owns that cap.

There is still no real timeline for when the other two Super Nintendo World theme parks will be finished (CA, FL); but given the restrictions in California, that park is in for a bumpy ride if it intends to still open in 2021.

Super Nintendo World will open in the spring of 2021 [Nintendo]

Ahead of next weekend’s PC multiplayer open beta for Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, the devs have announced times for pre-loading, the system requirements, and other such important numbers. This seems to be one of those ‘betas’ that is a time-limited demo more than an actual test, and all the marketing deals around it mean we won’t have long to play it on PC. But hey, we’ll get a few days to check out some multiplayer murders.

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I'm pretty good at 'hard' games. I'm not world-class, not by any means. I won't be signed to an esports team any time soon. But I can grapplehook through Sekiro, summit the peaks of Celeste and dodge bullets in Cuphead like the best of them. The internet told me to 'git gud' and I got fairly decent! There is one game, however, that gives me trouble. Papers, Please.

Papers, Please isn't known for its difficulty. The game casts you as an immigration officer for a small, fictitious, Eastern Bloc state. People trundle up to your checkpoint and you have to examine their documents before you decide whether or not to let them through. Apparently, Papers, Please is full of devious moral quandaries. Your code of ethics will be tested as you balance your duty to your nation with the burdens of paying rent and 'doing the right thing'. It sounds great. I'm sure it is great. But I wouldn't know. I couldn't get past the first level.

You see, playing Papers, Please involves carefully scanning documents and teasing out tiny inconsistencies. Does this photograph match the person in front of you? Is the date right? Has their passport been stamped by the right agencies? At this point, I feel the malaise of confusion descend. I seem to have let a spy into the country. The clock is ticking. I get flustered. I have now let in a whole agency of spies, bootleggers and other assorted enemies of the people. The klaxon sounds. My shift has ended. I have been fired and my family have starved. Drat. Dyslexic people clearly shouldn't become immigration officers.

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While Super Nintendo World won’t open until next spring, Universal Studios Japan has a taste of Nintendo starting this month.

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The PS5 is nearly ready to launch, and Sony is giving is the teardown video to prove it.

Just this morning the publishing giant gave us a full seven-minute rundown of the innards of the PS5, breaking it apart piece by piece. As Sony notes: you probably shouldn't try this at home without a technical background of some sort.

For the most part, this clip is for gearheads, and tells us a lot of what we already know. The PS5 is equipped with an x86-64-AMD Ryzen Zen 2 CPU, AMD Radeon RDNA 2-based graphics engine GPU, GDDR6 16GB of memory and liquid metal cooling. Sony is also sporting a Wi-Fi 6 antenna as well as USB-A and USB-C.

That look from Yasuhiro Ootri (VP, Mechanical Design at Sony) at the end is so satisfying. It's huge "bring it" energy.

Sony also shifted gears from a software standpoint, and took the opportunity to explain how trophies are changing over on the PlayStation Blog. In short, trophy ranges are going from 1-100 to 1-999. Once the update hits it'll automatically reconfigure your level (the example given is "12" will go to "the low 200s"). Platinum trophies will now be "more valuable" and "count more toward progression," and there will be a trophy level icon on the PS5 UI. All of this will shift over "later tonight."

Simple stuff, but exciting prospects for trophy hunters. The next generation is just over a month away at this point.

Questions for you. Let's say, you know ... hypothetically, Destructoid will be giving away a $3000-$5000 giveaway this holiday season.  What would the ideal prize be?

Does your tender heart lust for an RTX 3090 (or is that just a crazy CPU bottleneck), or a full-on PS5 with every accessory and launch game, and/or the new Xbox Part Deux X? Maybe one of those newfangled LG 120Hz 4K TVs?  Or if you are outside the continental US, take the whole prize pot as cash (or have the option to decide later and pay down your college loan out of guilt?). Would you rather see us give away something else instead?

Are contests where one-winner-takes all more interesting to you, or are you more likely to care if there's 20 winners and the prize is less fabulous but easier to win?

What would you be willing to do to win it? Inquiring marketing lords want to know! 

Holler. Especially if you participated in another contest somewhere else recently, what advice would you give a person in the position to potentially make one person's wildest dreams come true?  WHAT MOVES YOUR LOINS, MAN?

Originally, Universal Studios Japan’s Super Nintendo World was scheduled to open this July. But due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Mario-themed area was delayed.

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According to a report by Bloomberg, Activision-Blizzard is in the process of dissolving its office in Versailles, France, following what is described by the news outlet as "two years of turbulence."

Originally operated solely under Blizzard, the Versailles office's 400-strong staff were hit with hugely controversial layoffs in 2019, as a restructuring of Blizzard by Activision resulted in the loss of around 130 localised jobs. A long and drawn-out severance dispute with the government then left the office's staff and operations in a degree of limbo. Complicating matters, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic reportedly put an end to Blizzard's plan to relocate half of the Versailles team to London, and now it seems that the French headquarters may now be closed in its entirety.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Activision-Blizzard neither confirmed nor denied the report. "In the context of our Versailles office, the management of Blizzard France has informed its employee representatives of a proposed project to reorganize its activitie," said a spokesperson. "Supporting our employees through this process is our number one priority. We are working through various processes related to this and a CSE meeting is scheduled for October 13th and 14th. Until then, as there is a prescribed legal process, we cannot provide further comment."

Staff members are expected to receive more concrete information regarding the future next week.

Another generation, another attempt to sell you on expensive hardware.

I mean, I'm always there. I've been there since I started shoveling snow and working at 15 years old to partake in the newest games. But some generational leaps are more exciting than others. The jury is still out on this coming gap, in part due to the $10 price hike on a lot of software.

NBA 2K21 was one of the first games to be announced to buck that trend. It's going to be $70 on newer consoles, with is chalked up to more visual polish, says its publisher. But now that it's really getting down to the wire and we have ample footage of both the PS4 and PS5 editions of the game, it's time to compare and contrast.

YouTuber BBallCreator 2K put up a really useful and quick video that does just that, which you can view below. It's interesting, as some of the different character models look great on PS5 just because the PS4 ones look fairly poor, but overall there's a ton of detail in the former version. You can also see a drastic upgrade in terms of lighting when the camera shifts to an aerial view around 30 seconds in.

Like most things, they need to be seen in person to be believed. Hopefully the PS5 version is actually technically sound, and can hold these visuals with a proper framerate. With some games seemingly making us choose, these upgrades might not be as enticing. Also, does anyone else think 'Bron and the boys will take it on Friday?

My mate Greg is one of those people who’s phenomenally gentle and kind-hearted, but has a surprisingly brutal taste in media. He introduced me to a big chunk of the metal bands I listen to, and loves films with plenty of fights. I remember as teenagers, we spent an impossibly hot summer’s day watching Gangs Of New York, then roaring Daniel Day Lewis quotes at each other through mouthfuls of doner kebab afterwards. Absolutely cracking bloke.

Anyway, he’s been prodding me for ages to play a game called Sea Salt, and his patience has paid off at last, because I had a go at the weekend. So, Greg, this is for you: Sea Salt is really fun.

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Discrepancies in the western version of the Tokyo Game Show trailer of Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy caused fans to worry about possible censorship.

Luckily, the American arm of Koei Tecmo took to Twitter to reassure the fans, pledging that the game won’t be censored in the west.

Considering that the character design is one of the most relevant points that determined the success of the first game, it’s nice to hear that the charming work of Toridamono and Gust won’t receive any cuts in North America and Europe.

You can check out the tweet for yourself just below.

Developed by Bloober Team and released last August, Blair Witch is a psychological horror game that puts you in control of a man helping to search the Black Hills Forest for a boy that’s gone missing. With the first-person perspective, you had to make use of stealth mechanics to get past enemies, and use a video camera and cell phone to try to track the boy down.

A year later, and the game is coming to the Oculus Quest as well, providing players with a new way to experience the story in VR. You can check out the trailer down below:

Here’s the description of the new Oculus Quest version of the game:

“Blair Witch: Oculus Quest Edition is a brand new version of the story, built specifically for the VR experience. Environments have been redesigned for more interactivity and to accommodate new creature encounters. A new control system and mechanics for your companion dog such as petting, and fetching gestures help immerse players in the Blair Witch story. Yes, you can now pet the dog in Blair Witch: Oculus Quest Edition.
Designed with the new Oculus Quest 2 in mind, Blair Witch: Oculus Quest Edition supports higher resolution and better quality textures made possible by the power of this new hardware.”

Following yesterday’s reveal, Bandai Namco released a gallery of screenshots of the upcoming rhythm and idol management game The Idolmaster: Starlit Season

We get to see the newly announced idols, Nana Abe and Kirari Moroboshi will from The Idolmaster: Cinderella Girls, Tsumugi Shiraishi and Kaori Sakuramori, from Million Live, and Rinze Morino and Amana Osaki from Shiny Colors.

Next is the newly announced features starting with the ability to spend free time with each idol and deepen the bond with them. That’s done by solving their problems and helping their personal growth.

More images showcase the feature that let you accompany an idol to a variety of jobs. The result of the interaction with her will determine success or failure and influence her sales.

Lastly, we take a look at the training minigames that let you improve your idols’ skills with dancing, singing, and expressiveness lessons.

You can watch all the screenshots in the gallery below.

Koei Tecmo took to Twitter to pledge that people won't see a censored version of Atelier Ryza 2 released outside of Japan.

The post Koei Tecmo Commits to No Atelier Ryza 2 Censorship Outside Japan appeared first on Siliconera.

Among the many Monster Hunter Stories 2 details shared, the title is confirmed to be an RPG. Check out more on the battle system here.

The post Capcom Producer Shares a New Monster Hunter Stories 2 Details appeared first on Siliconera.

Amin Faramarzian is a freelance artist based in Turkey who has worked for companies like Lego, Hasbro and Pepsi.

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The chat feature in Breath of the Wild-style gacha game Genshin Impact has been found to censor a variety of words, including references to places like Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Tibet.

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Genshin Impact on PS4

I’ve spent 40 hours playing Genshin Impact so far and I still have a hard time believing this enormous, beautiful, charming open-world RPG is completely free. But somehow it is, and the result is an experience that raises the bar for an entire segment of the games industry that’s often bemoaned for its controversial monetization model.

Indeed, the depth of content and the high standard to which Genshin Impact been developed is shockingly impressive, and not just by free-to-play gacha game standards. This is an RPG that boasts a quality that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with many premium games, and there are aspects of its design that are actually more engaging.

And here I was, all the while thinking in the lead up to its release that Genshin Impact was nothing more than a Breath of the Wild knock-off –one that wouldn’t be able to hold a candle to the genre-defining classic it generously borrows from.

It’s the time of year for a lot of big, loud and explosive games, so if at any time you’re feeling in need of a palate cleanser, you could always check out Rainy Season.

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After a number of bombs and false starts, and a glorious mod that doesn’t count because it’s a mod, there’s finally a very good, official Game of Thrones video game. And all the developers had to do was port a board game to the PC.

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