Gamespot

The Skate franchise has a new studio that will lead development on the upcoming game, publisher EA confirmed. Called Full Circle, the "geo-diverse" team will be in charge of bringing the iconic skateboarding simulator back to life with a brand-new entry the publisher announced back in June 2020.

Leading Full Circle is studio general manager Daniel McCulloch, the former head of Xbox Live. McCulloch will be joined by Cuz Parry and Deran Chung, who served as the creative forces behind the Skate franchise and integral parts of the development of the three original games. Though based in Vancouver, the team is staffed by employees from around the world to "embrace a geo-diverse team and culture" focused on the next evolution of the Skate series.

In a press release announcing the new studio, McCulloch said Full Circle is looking for more developers to help out with "making great games that people want to play with the friends."

The Division 2 is getting its next big update soon, and it includes improvements for people playing on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, new Resident Evil content, and more.

Announced by the game's community developer on Twitter, title update 12.1 will launch on February 2 with a number of new additions. The patch adds 4K 60 FPS support for The Division 2 on next-gen consoles, while it also introduces the Resident Evil crossover event. The February 2 patch will also rebalance some of the Optimization Station costs.

In February, Ubisoft confirmed that it was not developing a bespoke version of The Division 2 for PS5 and Xbox Series X, with the developer instead focusing on improving the game for existing platforms. This effort is now extended to PS5 and Xbox Series X through next week's patch.

Ubisoft has issued the new Title Update 3.0 for Watch Dogs: Legion on PC, with console versions of the patch coming sometime soon. The patch includes various fixes and improvements, but focuses mostly on preparing for a closed technical test for the upcoming online mode.

According to a post on the Ubisoft forums, the tech test will gather data on stability with a large sample size of players. The 3.0 update is coming to consoles too at some point, but the company notes that some of the changes might be rolled into a separate update on consoles as we approach the launch of the online mode.

The online co-op mode was originally planned to hit Watch Dogs shortly after launch, but Ubisoft ultimately delayed it to focus its efforts on patching single-player issues. It promised at the time that the online mode would come in early 2021.

Less than a week after its release, Hitman 3 has already been profitable for developer and publisher IO Interactive. It's the first game in the series to be self-published after a long relationship with Eidos and Square Enix, followed by Warner Bros. publishing Hitman 2.

"As the developer and publisher, we are immensely proud that we can say Hitman 3 is already profitable," IO Interactive told GamesIndustry.biz in a statement. "We have recouped the total project costs in less than a week. That puts us in a really good place and allows us to confidently move forward with our ambitious plans for future projects.

Those projects include a 007 James Bond game, which will be an origin story not based on any of the existing actors' portrayals of the character. In the past, IO Interactive also developed the cult-hit third-person tactical shooter Freedom Fighters, which saw the United States invaded by Russia and a plumber leading an underground guerrilla movement to take back New York City.

When Monster Hunter Rise arrives on the Nintendo Switch, fans of Capcom's beast-slaying adventure who want to take the experience with them will have the option to grab a special edition of Nintendo's successful console. Nintendo will release a Monster Hunter Rise-themed Switch on March 26 in Europe and Japan, which features intricate designs from the game on the Switch, dock, and Joy-Cons.

The system hasn't been confirmed for a North American release yet, but the design is stunning and also features Monster Hunter Rise's flagship monster Magnamalo etched across the Switch dock.

The game itself will be included through a download code, alongside deluxe DLC such as "Kamurai" Hunter layered armor set, "Shuriken Collar" Palamute layered armor piece, "Fish Collar" Palico layered armor piece, Gestures (4 Jumps), Samurai pose set, Kabuki face paint, and "Izuchi Tail" hairstyle.

Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has responded to the conspiracy theories about him involving COVID-19, saying in a new interview that such theories are "crazy" and "evil."

Speaking to Reuters, Gates said the wild conspiracies about himself and US infectious disease leader Anthony Fauci have been driven in part by social media. He wondered if people actually believe the wild accusations or if they're just trying to have fun and get a rise.

"Nobody would have predicted that I and Dr. Fauci would be so prominent in these really evil theories," he said. "I'm very surprised by that. I hope it goes away."

Reggie Fils-Aime has left Nintendo of America, but he's still offering opinions and insights as an elder statesman in the games industry. During a recent panel at the New York Game Awards, the former NoA president talked about the benefits of diversity.

Asked about how the industry can show greater representation, Fils-Aime said diversity has to start with hiring practices.

"It starts with the people," Fils-AIme said. "It starts with having the broad representation within the companies themselves. In the last few years I was at Nintendo of America, we did a big push on diversity and inclusion within the company. And it's interesting, Once you do that, now there's a diversity of voices, it drives a diversity of representation in content, it drives a breadth and a view that you don't get when you have a more homogenous type of organization and culture. For me, for this industry to truly break through and to have a broad representation in all of the content that shows up on screen, it starts with companies having a broad representation of employees making the content. It's racial, it's sexual orientation, veteran, handicap, everyone that it represents. It's the people."

More than two decades after it first released, Microsoft's classic real-time strategy game Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is still regularly receiving new content. This week saw the release of Lords of the West, an expansion that adds three new campaigns and two more civilizations to the game.

The Sicilians and Burgundians are the focus of two of the new campaigns, while Edward Longshanks and the Britons are the focal point of the third set of missions.

A former Xbox boss has revealed some of the reasons why the company never made a portable game console, despite several teams inside Microsoft pushing for it.

Robbie Bach, who left Microsoft in 2010 after years of running the Xbox business from the beginning in 2001, said in a recent interview during the New York Game Awards that he rejected every Xbox portable proposal because the company just didn't have the bandwidth to support it.

The three pitches for a portable Xbox during Bach's tenure at Microsoft all referred to the system as "Xboy," which could have led to a trademark issue, the executive joked.

One of Microsoft's strategies for the future of gaming is streaming. It's still early days, and Microsoft's xCloud service has only just released, but CEO Satya Nadella said recently that he sees a lot of potential for streaming to help grow gaming beyond console and PC.

During Microsoft's latest earnings call, Nadella cautioned right up top that xCloud is still in its "very early days." But with that in mind, Nadella said Microsoft feels optimistic about the opportunity that streaming provides to help expand the market for Xbox beyond traditional platforms.

"The service today really allows us to take our catalog and not be limited to any of the traditional endpoints, in particular the console and the PC, and expand beyond that. And so, as you can imagine, that I think from our research perspective is very exciting to us," Nadella said. "And the fact that we now have a technology solution to do so, we are in the very early innings of that."

An Xbox Series X signed by Phil Spencer is up for auction, and all proceeds are going to a good cause. Spencer worked with the New York Game Awards to sign the console, which is now being auctioned off with proceeds supporting the New York Video Game Critics Circle non-profit.

This charity helps support underserved students in the Bronx and Lower East Side of New York City. The box was only opened so Spencer could sign it; other than that, it's brand-new.

For all we know, this is a truly a one-of-a-kind system. As such, there has been a high level of interest in the eBay auction so far, with more than 50 bids driving the price up to beyond $2,600 USD at press time.

Microsoft's Xbox business is booming, and this includes huge numbers for revenue, Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Live users, and console sales, the company said during an earnings call.

Xbox Game Pass is one of Microsoft's key strategies for next-gen, and the subscription service now has 18 million subscribers, which is up from 15 million that was announced in September. The addition of 3 million subscribers might be lower than some might have imagined, considering the holidays and other factors, but this might have been related to how Xbox Series X|S consoles have been and continue to be hard to find due to sell-outs around the world.

Despite that, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the Xbox Series X|S consoles enjoyed a strong start. Microsoft sold more Xbox Series X and S consoles during their launch month than any previous Xbox console over the same time frame, the executive said. There isn't a perfect comparison to any previous generation, as this is the first time that Microsoft launched two new Xbox models at launch instead of just one.

Developer ZeniMax Online Studios and publisher Bethesda Softworks took to Twitch to reveal The Elder Scrolls Online's year-long adventure, a series of DLC that make up the Gates of Oblivion. These expansions introduce new content for players to experience on PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One.

There will be four pieces of DLC sprinkled throughout the year. The first, Flames of Ambition, drops on March 8 for PC and Stadia, and March 16 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Meanwhile, headlining DLC the Blackwood chapter comes out just two months later: June 1 for PC and Stadia, and June 8 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The other two expansions, one unannounced dungeon pack and one unannounced story zone, launch in Q3 and Q4, respectively. Exact release dates have not been stamped.

The Flames of Ambition kicks off the Gates of Oblivion adventure. The expansion introduces two new PvE dungeons--Black Drake Villa and The Cauldron--that task players with attacking a shrine belonging to the Deadric Prince Mehrunes Dagon to find a tome before it's destroyed. Players will be joined by some familiar faces, including newcomer Eveli Sharp-Arrow and recurring character Dremora Lyranth, and can unlock new gear and collectibles.

Civilization VI's fifth DLC, The Vietnam and Kublai Khan Pack, will be releasing on January 28. To get fans hyped up, 2K has released new information on Kublai Khan, an alternate leader for Mongolia and China.

Let's get familiar with the man of the hour, shall we? Khan was ruler of the Mongolian Empire and founded the Yuan Dynasty in China, serving as Emperor. He ruled from 1260-1294 AD, creating an empire that ran from the Korean Peninsula to the edges of modern-day Baghdad. With a resume like that, he seems like a perfect fit for the Civilization series.

The popular service used for streaming music, TV shows, and movies on your own computer, Plex, is now adding video games to its repertoire. The new gaming branch of the service will be called Plex Arcade, and will be either $3 or $5 a month depending on your current Plex membership.

As the "Arcade" part of the service's name implies, Plex will be focusing on allowing people to stream older games--Atari games to be precise. There are currently 27 Atari games available on the service, including arcade classics like Centipede, Missile Command, and Super Breakout. Games from the Atari 2600 and 7800 also make an appearance.

Signing up for Plex Arcade and using it won't be quite as easy as signing into a regular streaming service on your console. To get started, you'll need a Plex media server running on a Windows or macOS computer. You will also need a Parsec account, and will have to log into it through your Plex server. Once you've gotten all that set up, you'll be able to check out Plex Arcade and its relative freedom.

Yesterday on the Good Game, Nice Try podcast, late night icon Conan O'Brien joined hosts Sonja Reid and Aaron Bleyaert to give his "incredibly unfair and invalid" opinion on Innersloth's smash-hit Among Us. His verdict: it's not a good game.

Bleyaert posed the question of how O'Brien felt about Among Us to sort of test the waters and get the conversation flowing. O'Brien was quick to jump on the opportunity, as he loves to tick off gamers. "As everyone knows, I don't know a lot about games, and I'm not good at games," O'Brien said. "But I love having a lot of opinions about games and sharing those with people in the legitimate gaming world, thus infuriating them."

Once Beyaert revealed the game in question, O'Brien excitedly told his companions on the show that he had heard of the game because it's one of his son's favorites. He went on to (jokingly) admit that he tends to space out when his children talk about video games or their feelings, so he had no real concept of the game other than its name and the fact that his son received a crocheted crewmate (or Blip Blop, as O'Brien calls them) from the game for his birthday.

Business is booming for Xbox. Microsoft has reported earnings for its Fiscal Year 2021 Q2, and included in the report are some new numbers that speak to how Microsoft's gaming division--like other gaming publishers--is riding high right now due in part increased spending on games due to COVID-19.

This is the first earnings release from Microsoft since it launched the Xbox Series X|S consoles in November. The release of those systems helped overall Xbox hardware sales jump by 86%.

Hardware revenue could have been higher were it not for product shortages. Analyst Daniel Ahmad said he believes the Xbox Series X|S consoles did not move as many units right away than the Xbox One did over the same timeframe. "This has been reflected in global sell-through data, too. Mainly due to production it seems," he wrote.

The murder mystery in Hitman 3's second mission, set in Dartmoor, England, is a standout portion of the game. If you solve the mystery, it gives you some unique opportunities to deal with Alexa Carlisle, your assassination target during the mission. It can also help you get ahold of the Arthur Edwards file you're searching for, which is your second objective in Dartmoor.

There are multiple ways to "solve" the mystery, however, depending on what information you uncover in Thornbridge Manor. You can find the actual culprit and turn them in to Alexa, or provide other solutions, including framing someone who's not responsible. To get those solutions, however, you need to have enough evidence to back up your theory and give a convincing speech when you report your findings. That means finding lots of clues. To solve the murder mystery, you'll need to knock out the private detective who arrives at Thornbridge at the same time Agent 47 does, and steal his clothes to make your disguise.

We've run down all three possible solutions to the murder mystery plot, how to earn them, and what opportunities they provide for you in the guide below. Be sure to check out the rest of our Hitman 3 guide coverage, as well as our full review. And if you need more help in Dartmoor, check out our complete guide for finding all the murder mystery clues, and our guide for finding all the mansion's hidden rooms.

Ahead of Apex Legends Season 8: Mayhem's debut on February 2, Respawn has dropped a brand-new trailer to show fans what they can expect.

The trailer focuses mostly on Apex's newest legend: Walter Fitzroy, AKA Fuse. He's an Australian hot head with an eyepatch and a penchant for breaking the rules. According to the trailer he was "born into a world ruled by chaos, and he thrived in the mayhem." It seems that's only going to continue as the The Champion of Salvo enters the ring. With his penchant for explosions, chaos, and Aussie accent, he's a bit reminiscent of Overwatch's Junkrat, though their playstyles look to be completely different.

Season 8 will also be introducing a new battle pass, a new weapon, and gold magazines in an attempt to continue expanding Apex's lore and meta. The new addition to your artillery in The Outlands is the 30-30 Repeater lever-action rifle, which looks like it can either fire of a series of weaker shots, or be slowly charged for a more powerful blast.

Life simulator The Sims 4 has received the new $10 Paranormal Stuff Pack for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S that adds another vocation, a new home for the Sims to live in, and various roommates all centered around the occult.

The pack is available to purchase from Microsoft, Origin, PlayStation, and Steam stores. Of course, players will need the base Sims 4 game to access the Paranormal Stuff content. Below is a rundown of everything players need to know about The Sim 4's latest DLC offering.

The Sims 4: Paranormal Stuff Pack Release Date, Trailer

The Paranormal Stuff Pack is available now for everyone to purchase. It retails for $10 USD on the Microsoft, Origin, PlayStation, and Steam stores, though those with active EA Play memberships can save 10% on the expansion, as well as all other The Sims 4 content. Developer Maxis and publisher EA shared a reveal trailer showcasing what players can expect from the Paranormal Stuff Pack, which includes new gameplay mechanics and items.

The upcoming Lord of the Rings game that focuses on Gollum has been delayed to 2022. The game was previously planned to release in 2021, but the delay came as part of the announcement that French publisher Nacon had signed on to co-publish the game with developer Daedalic Entertainment.

"The two companies decided to join forces to ensure that the game will meet the expectations of fans of The Lord of the Rings and fully leverage the power of the new generation of consoles," Nacon said in a press release.

The Gollum game is described as a "story-driven action adventure" title that focuses on Gollum's journey as a creature who is obsessed with the One Ring. Players will apparently get to decide if Gollum's evil side will come out or if he can retain the sense of goodness he had as Smeagol.

Banjo-Kazooie's Stop 'N' Swop feature is one of the most infamous pieces of cut content in video game history, and it's been the subject of fan speculation for decades. Now, thanks to the Rare fansite Rare Gamer, a leaked communication between Nintendo and developer Rare reveals why the feature was cut from Banjo-Tooie and other games at the twilight of the Nintendo 64, and the results are quite interesting.

As Eurogamer explains, the idea of Stop 'N' Swop itself was rather simple: players who achieved 100% completion in Banjo-Kazooie were treated to a special scene that showed Banjo walking into three previously-sealed areas. However, those areas remained inaccessible for the player, which prompted confusion from fans. Rare eventually explained on its website that players would be able to access these areas by swapping out their Banjo-Tooie cartridge for their Banjo-Kazooie cart, allowing them to take the goodies within back into Banjo-Tooie, where they could be used to great effect.

Hitman developer IO Interactive is preparing to go on a hiring spree to support the development of its upcoming James Bond video game and other projects.

IO director Hakan Abrak said in a new interview that the company plans to expand to around 400 people (up from 200) and open a new studio in Sweden to help develop the new James Bond project, which is only just getting started, along with other endeavors.

"It's very, very special--a boy's dream. Sometimes it's still a little hard to understand that it's us [making] James Bond," Abrak told The Gamer. "Today we [have] 200 employees and I expect that we will [have] over 400 employees over the next few years. So, there is no doubt that the Bond agreement means an insane amount to us."

When it comes to streaming microphones, there aren't many options better than the Elgato Wave 3 microphone, thanks to its easy-to-use onboard controls, Clipguard tech, and impressive audio. If you've been interested in snagging yourself a quality new microphone, then you can get the Elgato Wave 3 microphone for $140, down from its regular price of $160. The Wave 3 doesn't often see discounts of any kind and has been known to sell out quickly. With the current pandemic, it's hard to know when items will restock.

Another great aspect of the Wave 3 is its compatibility with Elgato's Wave Link software. This gives you the ability to adjust levels, filters, and sources from your PC and output them to your stream. If you want to exclude certain things from your viewers' ears, such as your friends' voice chat or any music, then you can do that with Wave Link.

Sea of Thieves' first-ever season is starting on January 28, and fans are curious what exactly that means for the pirate adventure game. A new blog post from developer Rare explains how this new seasonal model will work, and it's going to bring big changes to the game.

Essentially, the blog post explains that each season will last around three months, and it will bring new features, rewards, and events to Sea of Thieves. Each season will have its own progression track, and players will advance through that track by earning Renown, a new metric that's separate from the game's existing loot system. However, if players want to earn even more loot from completing the 100 levels of Renown, they can purchase the game's Plunder Pass to obtain more cosmetic items. Said Plunder Pass will cost 999 Ancient Coins, or $9.99.

Nvidia has released its latest Game Ready Driver for both desktop and laptop GPUs, with support for Bloober Team's The Medium.

The latest driver ensures the best performance for The Medium when it launches later this week on PC, including support for its ray tracing and DLSS features. The Medium is also launching on Xbox Series X and Series S, and will be available on Xbox Games Pass across PC and console.

In tandem with support for The Medium, the latest driver also launches alongside the first RTX 30-series powered laptops. Nvidia announced Max-Q designs for the RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 earlier this year, with some of the first laptops with the chips launching today and through early February.

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red has released official modding tools for the dystopian RPG, letting players create their own custom content.

Since launch there have been many third-party mods for Cyberpunk 2077, including one that allowed you to play the game (badly) in third-person. With the official tools out now, the flood gates are open to custom quest content, asset swaps, and more. CD Projekt Red says the toolset will be updated with the game, meaning mod compatibility should not be an issue.

This comes on the heels of the first big patch for Cyberpunk 2077, which aimed to start addressing some of the game's most pressing stability, performance, and scripting issues. Although Patch 1.1 did help some players, it has inadvertently introduced a new game-breaking bug that can halt your main story progress. CD Projekt Red is aware of it and has released a workaround for the issue until a proper fix is released.

The team behind the hit hard-as-nails platformer Celeste are celebrating the third anniversary of the game's release, and they've made a quick sequel to the game's 8-bit progenitor as part of the festivities. If you've played Celeste, you might have encountered the 8-bit version on the fictional PICO-8 video game console as a little extra.

What many people don't know is that the PICO-8 game, which was built in three days as part of a game jam, was actually the prototype for the entire Celeste project. This sequel, titled Celeste 2: Lani's Trek, features a completely new core mechanic and playable character. Lani obtains a grappling hook early on in Celeste 2, and it quickly becomes your main method of traversal. However, Lani can also use the grappling hook to grab items, including snowballs and spring platforms, which quickly ramps up the complexity of the game.

Celeste 2: Lani's Quest is available for free on developer Maddy Thorson's Itch page. Though the game defaults to keyboard controls, we recommend using your preferred controller, because it requires pinpoint precision just to get past the first few screens. According to Thorson and co-developer Noel Berry, Celeste 2 was built in just a few days, and it was inspired by a community event for the anniversary of Celeste that was organized by fans of the 2018 game. Late last year, Thorson published a blog post that explored the gender identity of the game's trans protagonist Madeline, and how that overlapped with their own experience.

Publisher THQ Nordic has stamped a release date on the long-in-development open-world critter brawler Biomutant. The game is slated to drop on May 25 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. THQ Nordic didn't clarify if the game is coming to PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S.

Alongside announcing Biomutant's release date, THQ Nordic shared two editions players can preorder right now from the game's website: the Atomic Edition and Collector's Edition. The $120 Collector's Edition comes with the base game, figurine, soundtrack, the official artwork on a piece of fabric, and a premium box to store everything in. At $400, the Atomic Edition comes with the same artwork fabric, soundtrack, and game, but it also packages a 12-inch tall dioramic action scene statue, steelbook case, large or extra-large t-shirt, oversized mousepad, and a premium box. Check the images below to get a good look at what's in both editions.

2020 has ended, but we're not finished celebrating the year's games. The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences has announced the nominees for this year's 24th annual D.I.C.E. Awards, and Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part II leads the way with 11 total nods, including Game of the Year.

In total, 57 different games received nominations in 2020, but it was The Last of Us Part II that led all others with 11 nominations. In addition to Game of the Year, The Last of Us Part II was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Animation, Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction, Outstanding Achievement in Character (for Abby and Ellie), Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design, Outstanding Achievement in Story, Outstanding Technical Achievement, Adventure Game of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Game Design, and Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction.

Another Sony exclusive, Ghost of Tsushima, follows behind with 10 nominations. Games that received five nominations include Half Life: Alyx, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Ori and the Will of the Wisps.

Epic has announced the next exclusive skin for Fortnite Crew subscribers, Vi of the Fox Clan. The colorful (and very thematic) warrior comes equipped with some specialty items that you can mix and match with your other skins, along with other subscriber benefits.

Vi will be available starting January 31 at 7 PM ET, and will rotate out again at the end of February. In addition to the V skin itself, you'll also get the Foxbow Quiver Back Bling, Crooked Claw Pickaxe, and Drift Shift Wrap. Those cosmetics are in addition to the regular benefits of access like the current battle pass and 1,000 V-Bucks.

Fortnite Crew is a recurring $12 per month subscription fee that began in November. The 1,000 V-Buck bonus is delivered every month upon your resubscription date.

After a slight delay, King Arthur: Knight's Tale has entered Steam Early Access on PC. Described as a hybrid between turn-based tactical games and more traditional character-centric RPGs by its developer NeoCore Games, King Arthur: Knight's Tale also has a darker spin on classic Arthurian mythology as players lead Sir Mordred in a quest to gather the Knights of the Round Table and rebuild the kingdom of Camelot.

The Early Access version of the game currently includes features from the very beginning of the campaign, including two story missions and several side missions, seven playable heroes from four different classes, a level cap of 5, and some of the Camelot management mechanics. Inspired by games such as XCOM, King Arthur: Knight's Tale also focuses heavily on managing your heroes, their skills, and growth.

A permadeath system places a strong focus on not only fine-tuning each hero so that they can survive each battle, but their loyalty can shift during the course of the game, possibly even deserting your group and eventually turning against you.

The space-based Factorio-like Dyson Sphere Program has garnered serious traction on Steam, with over 200,000 copies sold in two days. Released back on January 21 in Early Access, Dyson Space Program is a factory simulator similar to Satisfactory and Factorio, where players are challenged to build an industrial installation that rapidly escalates in automation and complexity.

Dyson Sphere Program sets itself apart from its competitors by taking place at a galactic scale. The ultimate goal of the game is to build titular Dyson Spheres, which are hypothetical constructs from the pages of sci-fi author Olaf Stapledon. Theoretically, if humanity could build a gigantic sphere around a given star, we could harness much of the star's power output to meet the energy requirements inherent to intergalactic travel.

Several of the game's Steam reviews describe Dyson Space Program as a step forward for the factory-building genre. However, they note that the game lacks certain quality-of-life features that players might expect, such as the ability to easily dismantle groups of buildings.

The latest patch for Bethesda's Fallout 76 has arrived, and it's a big one. The new update is out now on all platforms, and one of the main changes is that the Stash limit has been increased to 1,200 pounds, which will enable you to carry more loot on your journey.

Another highlight is a UI change that makes it easier to view your inventory. There are now three tabs in your inventory, one each for "New," "Armor," and "Food/Drink." The game will also now show you the total weight of the items in your inventory when you stack them. Additionally, vending machines on the map now show you how many 1-, 2-, and 3-star items they have available, so you can set out knowing what's in stock.

The Fallout 76 build mode also gets an update that adds blue outlines, replacing the green ones, to help players who are colorblind to more easily identify the pieces.

Garena Free Fire is one of the most popular mobile shooters out there, competing with the likes of Fortnite and PUBG Mobile, and that means that a lot of people play it every single day. Unfortunately, that also means a lot of cheaters flock to the game as well; in fact, according to a new video from the game's publisher, Garena banned over 30 million cheaters in 2020 alone.

The video goes on to say that 31% of the accounts that were banned were reported by players, meaning that 69% were detected by the game's automatic anti-cheat measures. Auto-aim was the most common offense for these hackers, with 36% getting banned for it, followed by hacks that let you see through walls, teleport, and one that puts an "antenna" on all opponents, allowing you to see them from afar.

Garena Free Fire is a free-to-play battle royale game for mobile that has a lot in common with Fortnite and PUBG Mobile. Players parachute down to an island with fifty or so opponents and shoot it out in ever-tightening battle circles, with only one player or team surviving to claim victory. Currently, the game is only available for mobile platforms like iOS and Android.

The publisher of the Lord of the Rings game centered around Gollum has announced the next game it will publish, and it's completely different. Daedalic Entertainment has announced it will publish the game Hidden Deep, which is a game made by a single person: Łukasz Kałuski.

Kałuski started the game in 2014 as a passion project and Kałuski has been funding it himself for three years. "Without a doubt, Hidden Deep is the biggest project of my life into which I put all my heart and sweat and I love doing this," Kałuski said on his website.

In Hidden Deep, you explore a "vast suboceanic research and mining facility" that is overrun with aliens. You're trying to find out what happened to the crew, and you'll use weapons and gadgets to survive in the depths of the ocean and try to survive as the aliens close in. The game is inspired by movies like Alien and The Thing, as well as the first Half-Life game.

The latest generation of video game consoles have been a prime example of what happens when high demand collides with low supply numbers, as UK retailer Argos found out this week when it was targeted by PS5 scalper groups.

As reported by IGN, users of the scalping group Express Notify managed to obtain and share links for the limited supply of new PS5 consoles amongst its members, a full day before Argos publically announced the stock refresh to consumers on January 26.

While Argos did react and shut down any rogue links from the loophole that Express Notify had discovered, by then several of the consoles had already been ordered and collected from Argos outlets. Several members of the group posted pictures of their successful purchases, with some users having bought multiple consoles as well. This resulted in there being even less stock available for the official stock drop, with other technical issues only compounding the experience for legitimate customers.

The Guiness Book of World Records has certified another achievement; this one for the largest Lego mini brick build ever, and the construction itself is a Lord of the Rings-themed diorama.

The epic design that you can see in the video below was built by a team of 50 designers who used an astonishing 150 million pieces to construct the set. It took the builders three years.

The diorama is inspired by battles from various battles depicted in The Lord of the Rings, and it is truly a sight to behold. It boggles the mind to think about the time, effort, and planning that was required to pull off such a feat of creativity and engineering.

The big Season 5 update for Halo: The Master Chief Collection is nearly here, and among its new additions are a whopping 80 new armor pieces for Halo 3 and Halo: Reach. 343 Industries has now revealed a number of these and spoke more generally about where they came from.

The new armors stem in part from the canceled Russian free-to-play game Halo Online, which was based on the Halo 3 engine. When they are released for Halo: MCC in the Season 5, they will officially become canon, 343 said.

Season 5 is called Anvil, a name that is inspired by the Anvil Station from Halo lore. "At Anvil Station, the UNSC would test skunkworks technologies and clandestine prototypes, some destined for full and successful production runs, other merely serving as a stop-gap in the development pipeline of Mjolnir components, weapon advancements, and more," 343 said. "Warriors from both sides were eager to face off in field test simulations, hoping to not only advance their respective technologies, but hone their personal proficiency in battle."

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is getting a dose of Hello Kitty in March, with a set of Sanrio Amiibo cards. The Animal Crossing Sanrio Collaboration Pack will be available at Target stores on March 26 and cost $6.

The pack includes all six Amiibo cards, with functionality to be announced sometime in the future. Some of the cards are themed after popular characters like Hello Kitty and My Melody, while others just capture colorful or thematic backgrounds. Each of the cards also features an existing Animal Crossing character, like Marty, Chai, and Toby. You can see all six cards below.

These cards were first announced in 2017. Those cards worked with Animal Crossing: New Leaf and then later with New Horizons. Assuming the functionality is the same, they unlock a series of in-game posters for New Horizon that you can hang on your wall, displaying Animal Crossing and Sanrio characters.