Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who with a net worth of $130 billion is currently the world’s richest man, announced that he was creating the Bezos Earth Fund on Monday. The fund is a $10 billion global initiative that aims to fund “any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world.”
Kristofer Hivju, the Norwegian actor known for his role in Game of Thrones as fan-favorite character Tormund Giantsbane, has been confirmed as part of Netflix’s The Witcher Season 2. That’s according to enthusiast blog site Redanian Intelligence, which has apparently acquired a casting breakdown of the season.
Hivju star in the season’s opening episode and is strongly suspected to play the role of Nivellen, a character featured in one of The Last Wish’s short stories called “A Grain of Truth.” That’s because his codename is “Nigel,” and the show has a history of using codenames that start with the same letter as their actual character.
Further, Nigel’s description matches that of Nivellen, who is described as “a charismatic, witty and funny man. He’s from an aristocratic family and has been cursed as a boy for the crimes he has committed in the past.”
We won’t spoil anything for those who haven’t read the books, but that lines up almost exactly with Nivellen as depicted in the books.
The blog had actually predicted Hivju would feature in the season 2 a while back after one of The Witcher Season 2’s directors tagged him in a social media post while scouting filming locations. Later it was discovered that Hivju had recently followed a bunch of Witcher accounts, too.
In related news, we recently learned that Netflix’s animated series is about Vesemir’s Witcher path.
Morgana infiltrated Koei Tecmo's Hiyoshi Offices to hang out with General Producer Kou Shibusawa who talked Persona and showed off Persona 5 Scramble gameplay.
The post Koei Tecmo’s Kou Shibusawa Talks Persona, Shows Off Persona 5 Scramble Gameplay appeared first on Siliconera.
Half-Life: Alyx is barely a month out now, scheduled to release on March 23rd. When it was originally announced as a VR-only title, Valve’s own Index VR headset quickly flew off physical shelves and was entirely sold out online by mid-January in all 31 countries where it’s sold. As reported by Road To VR, the Index is still all but sold out globally.
An Unreal Engined 4 version of The Witcher Enhanced Edition is now playable in VR thanks to a new mod. Over on Nexus Mods, Patryk Loan explains that currently the mod only allows players to “take a walk in Kaer Morhen,” but there are future plans to add more maps and even story sequences of the game. It currently supports Oculus, HTC, and Windows Mixed Reality.
A new trailer showcases the modified version of the game for the first time, which you can check out below. As you can see, it switches the perspective to first-person for a more immersive experience.
Installation of the mod appears easy enough –though we haven’t yet tried–, requiring simply that you own The Witcher Enhanced Edition, download the mod, and follow the installation procedure. Head over to Nexus Mods to download it.
A quick bit of snooping around Patryk Loan’s YouTube channel reveals a work in progress recreation of The Witcher’s opening prologue in Unreal Engine 4.
It’s just about that time for Sony to announce what free games will be included on PS Plus for the upcoming month of March 2020, and just about our time to give our PS Plus predictions.
Last month we saw a really strong line up with The Sims 4, Bioshock: The Collection, and PSVR game Firewall Zero Hour. This marks the first time a PSVR exclusive has been included on PS Plus since Starblood Arena back in February 2018.
For next month, we predict action/adventure game Mirror’s Edge Catalyst from EA seems like a likely choice.
Past EA games offered on PS Plus include Plants vs. Zombies in February 2013, Titanfall 2 in December 2019, The Sims 4 for the current month of February 2020, and much more.
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst released way back in 2016, and considering Sony usually only waits two to three years before it puts a AAA game on PS Plus means this title is way past the time when we would have expected it’s inclusion.
Amazon Game Studios announced their upcoming 17th century MMO New World late last year. It’s planned for a release this May and at only three months out, it seems like I know a lot less than I’d like to about what on Earth (or Aeternum?) this new open world online game is supposed to be. Amazon released another in a series of developer diaries today talking more about world lore and factions but frankly I still don’t think it tells us much.
Nintendo has announced via a tweet on its official Twitter account that those beautiful wireless SNES controllers for the Nintendo Switch are now back on sale after being unavailable for quite some time now.
The wireless controller perfectly emulates the original controller for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and can be used to play the SNES and NES games that are available exclusively for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers.
Click here to watch embedded media With the advent of Twitch streams comes a way for chat to influence the game a streamer is playing, and we're giving you that opportunity today. Join me as I play through a collection of Dead Cells, Clustertruck, and Choice Chamber and try to outwit the GI Community!
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Obviously, we will be talking about spoilers and post-credits scenes for the new Sonic the Hedgehog live-action film that’s just been released in theaters. So, if you do not want to get spoiled, I would recommend turning away now and never coming back.
Just kidding, just go watch the movie and then you can come back and check out this article, but you’ve been warned.
Arguably, some of the best scenes in the Sonic the Hedgehog movie were the times that Dr. Eggman, played by Jim Carrey, was on-screen. Carrey did a fantastic job bringing his humor into the role and you can tell immediately that he was having a lot of fun bringing the character to life.
Code Shifter has some really cool 2D versions of great Arc System Works characters, but its gameplay is rather dull.
The post Code Shifter’s Crowning Achievement Is Cool 2D Depictures of Iconic Characters appeared first on Siliconera.
Developer Nimble Giant Entertainment has announced that its time-bending multiplayer shooter Quantum League will run an open beta for PC players from Feb. 21 to March 2.
Nimble Giant’s lead designer Balthazar Auger said of today’s announcement in a press release today:
“Quantum League‘s open beta is a great opportunity for players to test their skill and experiment with the time loop mechanic. We can’t wait to see the new strategies players will discover.”
Quantum League is described as a “revolutionary time paradox shooter.” The online shooter sees players battle within a time loop, tactically teaming up with their past and future selves in mind-blowing one-versus-one and two-versus-two matches.
It’s set within an alternate universe in which time travel has changed the face of competitive sports into something much more deadly. Donning armor and weapons, competitors duke it out in specially designed arenas and must call on a high degree of teamwork to emerge unscathed.
Quantum League’s unique mechanics demand that players take into consideration where they were and where they want to be to make a winning shot. Check out a tease of the gameplay mechanics in a new cinematic trailer below.
Long-running free-to-play FPS Warface has surprise-launched on Nintendo Switch.
Warface, which initially released for PC back in 2013 before making its way to PS4 and Xbox One in 2018, offers up a bullet-zinging selection of PvP and PvE modes, enabling combatants to step into the soldier-shoes of five different classes: the long-range Sniper, medium-range Riflemen, tank-like SED, Engineer, and Medic.
Warface, in case you were wondering, is the first CryEngine-powered game on Switch, and runs at 30FPS/720p in TV mode and 540p in handheld and tabletop modes, according to publisher My.Games. It also includes gyro support for more precise aiming, HD rumble, voice chat, and is playable online without the need for a Switch Online subscription.
At twelve years young, beat-riding arcade game AudioSurf just got an update out of nowhere. All casual like, Dylan Fitterer has just posted some changes to the game including some new aspect ratio goodness and an update to make corkscrew twists on the roller coaster style tracks feel cooler and more earned.
A 3D Stardew Valley model of Pelican Town has come to Dreams, giving people a different look at places.
The post 3D Stardew Valley Pelican Town Model Created in Dreams appeared first on Siliconera.
A penguin man and polar bear woman walk into a tavern in Dwarf Fortress. | Image: Bay 12 Games via Polygon
We took the colony simulation’s often overlooked Adventure mode out for a spin, and things got weird
Nine Dots Studio’s open-world fantasy RPG Outward’s first premium DLC, Soroboreans, is set to launch this spring. The news comes by way of a press release from both the developer and its publisher Deep Silver, which confirms a March 26 release date.
In keeping with the game’s emphasis on survival mechanics, role-playing, and exploration, Soroboreans isn’t a story expansion but rather a set of new systems to enhance those core features.
This includes Corruption, an effect that impacts your character in different ways and adds new layer of strategy to the survival experience. Further, new status effects are also to be introduced, said to have the potential to completely change playstyles.
There’s also a new progression system called enchantments, which allows players to upgrade weapons and gear with new effects. Presumably, this will keep our favorite gear competitive against new enemy types in addition to the inevitable influx of new gear scattered throughout the world for Soroboreans.
While new locations aren’t mentioned in today’s press release, it does appear that there will be new places to explore based on the first teaser images of Soroboreans seen below.
Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Syndicate will be free on the Epic Games Store later this week as part of Epic Games’ promotion to give out free PC games each week from its launcher.
The open world action and stealth game follows twin assassins Jacob and Evie Frye in Victorian era London fighting against Templar control. The game also features famous figures from the era including Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Florence Nightingale, and more.
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate originally released in 2015 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. It was the sequel to the disastrous Assassin’s Creed Unity and was followed by Assassin’s Creed Origins, which evolved the franchise with a much larger map and expanded RPG elements.
The free game will be available to claim this Thursday, Feb. 20 until Feb. 27. The Epic Games Store has two editions of the game: Standard and Gold, which contains the season pass of three add-ons.
Also available to download for free this Thursday is Faeria, a strategic card game with 300 cards to collect and “100+ hours of solo content, co-operative missions, and puzzles.” The free games currently being offered by Epic until this Thursday are open-world RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance and beat ’em up and turn-based strategy game Aztez.
The post Assassin’s Creed Syndicate Free on Epic Games Store Later This Week appeared first on Twinfinite.
Sony announced its official PlayStation forums will be closing in February 2020, telling people to visit its social media accounts instead.
The post PlayStation Forums Will Close in February 2020 appeared first on Siliconera.
Nvidia has revealed a limited-edition Cyberpunk 2077 RTX 2080 Ti GPU today in a flashy trailer. Only 200 of the futuristic-looking cards are being made and they won’t be available at retail. Instead, you’re only way of scoring one if to enter Nvidia’s sweepstakes 2020 giveaway and keep your fingers crossed that you’ll win one of 77 being put up for competition.
Here’s how you enter:
Today’s news had actually been teased by both CD Projekt Red and Nvidia earlier this month in a cryptic exchange on Twitter in which both accounts had a short back and forth.
The RTX 2080 Ti is the company’s flagship GPU, representing the bleeding edge of graphical technology. It’s capable of ray-tracing, which we’ve already seen make Cyberpunk 2077 look especially beautiful in a bunch of screenshots released back at Gamescom 2019.
You can check out the new promotional trailer showcasing the card below.
Bayonetta and Vanquish are back, again, and that has great implications for games and game history
The post Bayonetta and Vanquish Helped Legitimize the Video Game Cult Classic appeared first on Siliconera.
Few studios know the challenge of teaching fighting games better better than Mortal Kombat maker NetherRealm, and at GDC next month you'll see how Mortal Kombat 11's revamped tutorial mode was made! ...
Alright vampire lovers, do not despair. Bloodlines 2 got the ol’ pushback but Castlevania has you covered for early 2020. Netflix’s Castlevania is returning for a third season in March with more animated fangs based on Konami’s classic vamp ’em up . That’s the news part. The non-news is that vampires are still hot. You don’t need me to tell you that, you can just watch the trailer.
Registrations for Black Desert developer Pearl Abyss' Shadow Arena's closed beta have begun.
The post 40-Man Free-for-all Shadow Arena Goes Into Closed Beta on February 27 appeared first on Siliconera.
The official Fortnite twitter tweeted a mysterious encoded message today, leading up to the release of Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 2 on Thursday of this week.
The tweet features a hinted intercepted transmission, conveniently blacked out, and a strange hand print logo. The internet has been abuzz to uncover the meaning of this hand print, but so far, Fortnite still has the upper hand.
Check out the Tweet for yourself:
This tweet isn’t the first cryptic tease for Chapter 2 Season 2 this week, either. Yesterday, Twitter account @flakespower noticed a strange Fortnite ad in a metro station in Brazil.
We were scheduled to get a single free game from Epic this week, a deck-building strategy title called Faeria. But, the tides have shifted, the tables have turned, and now we're getting a giant open-world game in one of the biggest series around.
Assassin's Creed Syndicate has been added as the second free game this week on the Epic Games Store. In my review back in 2015, I praised the way Assassin's Creed Syndicate stitched the gameplay into its narrative, how it elaborated upon Unity's black box assassination system, and how the story was better told through two protagonists rather than just one. I closed the review feeling optimistic about the way Syndicate would lead the direction of future Assassin's Creed; then, Ubisoft promptly took a year off and completely overhauled the franchise with new approaches in Origins and Odyssey.
Instead, Assassin's Creed Odyssey was the last of its kind. If you want to see what it was all about, it'll be free (alongside Faeria) come Thursday February 20. Until then, you have a couple more days to snag this week's freebies, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Aztez. The Epic Games Store took a cue from Assassin's Creed: Syndicate's protagonists: Two is better than one.
Free Games [Epic Games Store]
Following Sony’s announcement of its financial results for the past quarter, analyst Hideki Yasuda from prominent Osaka-based firm Ace Research Institute posted his analysis about the performance of PS5.
Yasuda-san’s name is rather well-known in Japan due to his analysis and predictions focused on the gaming market.
According to him, both PS5 and PS4 should ship 6 million units during the next fiscal year, which will end on March 31, 2021. On top of that, he predicts 15 million units shipped during the following year (between April 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022).
Yasuda-san also mentions that supply and demand of components by DRAM is expected to be tight, but he doesn’t think that it’ll be a big problem.
However, since the slowdown of PS4 sales has become evident, expectations for the PS5’s launch are going to increase.
Of course, since the analysis was posted at the beginning of the Coronavirus outbreak, it remains to be seen if it’ll have any effect on parts supply.
We should also keep in mind that this is an analysis by an industry professional based on his experience, so it should be taken with the customary grain of salt.
During Sony’s financial conference call, CFO Kenichiro Yoshida mentioned that the company still didn’t have a firm grasp on the possible effects of the outbreak, even if he talked about it only in general terms and not specifically about the console market.
Incidentally, we also heard during the call that Sony is aiming for a smooth generational transition (in financial terms) due to the revenue provided by PlayStation Plus and other network services.
Nick van Dyk, the president of Activision Blizzard's film and television division, may have leaked the development of Overwatch and Diablo animated series on his LinkedIn profile, which GameSpot uncovered. According to his profile, the Diablo animated series is "rendered in anime style" and is in pre-production for Netflix. The Overwatch information isn't as detailed, and simply reads, "With my creative partner, developed and sold an animated series based on Blizzzard's Overwatch franchise." The buyer of the rights for this popular competitive shooter is not listed. You can see the profile listing below:
Since Overwatch's release in 2015, fans have wanted to learn more about the game's story. Blizzard hopes to deliver on this request in Overwatch 2's new story modes. Hearing a show is on the way too lessens the excitement for the mode a little bit, but this game's universe is overflowing with plot threads and there's likely room for both of them to exist. Here's hoping the show is done by Blizzard's team behind the awesome animated shorts.
If there was one thing that really started to feel a little tired in Fortnite’s first 10 seasons, it was the general layout of the map. Over the course of ‘Chapter 1’ as we’ll now dub the first 10 seasons, the map changed significantly, but large parts of it remained the same. Step in Fortnite Chapter 2.
Lair of the Clockwork God, the next title by Size Five Games, is due to launch only next week - but developer Dan Marshall has somehow managed to make a second game at the same time, as a surprise prequel called Devil's Kiss has also been announced.
Oh, and it's also being bundled in for free for anyone who buys Lair of the Clockwork God - or a small $2 (£1.54) for those who want it as a standalone. Now that's a deal with the devil you'll want to make.
"Devil's Kiss is a hilarious and sexually-enticing visual novel following alluring teenage heroes Dan and Ben, who meet at high school and promptly uncover a vast, horny conspiracy involving some demons," reads the press release. If you want to see what the hell that looks like, there's a trailer to help, and you can find the Steam page here.
The Fate Grand Order Ryougi Shiki event will return, granting people access to The Garden of Sinners again.
The post First Fate/Grand Order Collab Event Returns With a Garden of Sinners Revival appeared first on Siliconera.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's battle royale mode has been the worst-kept secret in gaming for many months now. As we get closer to its inevitable launch, more details are leaking out as to what we can expect.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Modern Warfare's Warzone mode will launch on March 10 (although, this seems to be an educated guess moreso than hard confirmation). Sources within Activision say that it'll be free-to-play as a standalone mode. Last year's Blackout mode within Black Ops 4 got some extended trial access, but never properly went free-to-play.
Warzone will be the biggest of the major battle royales, as it's said to support 200 players. This means the Warzone playspace will be massive, and it'll feature a lot of areas that are ripped from other multiplayer maps. Here's a leak of the map (also in the gallery below) that shows places like Boneyard and Quarry from this Modern Warfare. It's also mentioned that some locations are homages to maps in previous Modern Warfare games, like Scrapyard and Broadcast (presumably as Lumberyard and TV Stations, respectively).
Katana Kami multiplayer features includes both real-time and asynchronous variants.
The post Katana Kami: A Way of the Samurai Story Explains Its Online Multiplayer in a New Trailer appeared first on Siliconera.
It's so exciting to see new players and creators dive into Dreams, the just-fully-launched game and art creation suite from LittleBigPlanet's own Media Molecule. There's no shortage of stuff to thumbs-up, but some of it needs to be seen to be believed. That's how I'd sum up Fallout 4: Dreams Edition.
The fan-made game, built entirely within Dreams on a PlayStation 4, recreates the Fallout 4 intro roll and lets you at it. You can explore a few early areas, complete with a functional (but not yet finalized) Pip-Boy and combat system. I smacked a Mirelurk with a hammer, made rude remarks to a roaming Mister Handy, and got in a cheesy duck-behind-cars shootout with an Annihilator Sentry Bot MK II.
The creator of this dream, Robo_Killer_v2, still has a long way to go – it's a self-described work-in-progress with limited playable content – but I am already so impressed. The framework is there.
It's well worth a playthrough if you own Dreams. (Note: you're going to want to enable the game's "higher frame rate" option on PS4 Pro if you haven't already done so.) Otherwise, if you'd just like to see this creation in action, here's a 12-minute playthrough from YouTube user Dreams Have Meanings.
The Dragon Quest series' upcoming mobile strategy game Dragon Quest Tact shared a look at battle and some gacha pulls in its first gameplay video.
The post Dragon Quest Tact First Gameplay Footage Shows Battle and Some Gacha appeared first on Siliconera.
Today Sega posted an apology on the official site of the recently-released Japanese version of Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mix.
The developer and publisher mentions that the latest Switch-exclusive rhythm game featuring the super popular virtual idol is out of stock at many retailers in Japan, apologizing for the inconvenience caused to customers.
They also mention that there will be further shipments, so gamers are encouraged to reserve their copies to get one when they hit the shelves again.
That being said, it’ll take some time for the next shipment, so fans are also encouraged to check out the digital version on the Nintendo eShop.
On top of that, the next shipment will still include the early purchase bonus, which will be indicated by a sticker on the cover.
It appears that Sega underestimated the demand for the game. This isn’t the first time it happens in recent times, as 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim for PS4 suffered from the same issue.
Image: PUBG Corp.
Image: Flying Oak Games/E-Studio