Prior to CES 2019, HTC tweeted an image of some of the new VR gear that it's bringing to the tech event. All of the products are boxed away in their cases, so it's still a mystery as to what HTC will be announcing.
In the tweet, there are some hints--both in the image and the accompanying text--that shed some light on what might be announced though. The tweet refers to the new announcements as "gear" so HTC is probably focusing on Vive hardware reveals for CES this year. And although HTC blurred the logos on the cases in the image, they're not completely ineligible. CNET believes one of the cases says "Vive Port" and another reads "Vive Gloves" or "Vive Cloud." We'll have to wait for CES to find out for sure, however.
The truck is loaded and we're excited be on our way to #CES2019. The cases are packed with some new gear we can't wait to unbox for you. Keep tuned to @htcvive social media during CES for announcements, news and daily coverage. #HTCVIVE#VIVEPORTpic.twitter.com/lkwKE7plPw
First held in New York City in 1967, CES became an annual Las Vegas event in 1998. Usually a series of presentations for upcoming technological and electronic products, CES covers everything from 3D printing to robotics. As seen at CES 2018, the event has become a great place to try out the latest in PC tech, test VR headsets, and experiment with new ways to play retro games.
While smaller Switch games go on sale all the time on the Nintendo Eshop, the big exclusives tend to stick frustratingly close to their launch price points. That's great news for Nintendo's investors, but it doesn't give deal-hunters much to get excited about. So it's nice to see that this week a number of retailers have dropped prices on a handful of Switch-exclusive games to $42 / £33.
Target has you covered for physical copies, while the Eshops have similar pricing on the digital versions. And if you're going to load up on digital games, you might want to grab a bigger microSD card for your Switch. Amazon is selling 128GB cards for $22 right now, which is a small price to pay for not having to worry about carrying around tiny game cartridges with you.
As for which games are on sale, you've got the unique fighting game Arms, which pits long-limbed characters against one another in zany boxing matches. Also on sale is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a terrific single- or multiplayer racer that comes with all the DLC characters and tracks from the Wii U version.
Anyone in the mood for a colorful online shooter can grab Splatoon 2 for cheap, and if retro RPGs have a nostalgic place in your heart, you'll feel right at home in the stylish game Octopath Traveler. And for those of us who want to find catharsis by slashing through hordes of enemies, Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition lets you do so as some of your favorite Legend of Zelda characters. These deals will be gone by January 10, so make your purchases by then.
Sega appears to be using its Steam page for Bayonetta to tease another impending announcement, but what it might be is still a mystery. A bizarre image of a sheep has sparked theories ranging from a crossover with Bayonetta to something new for Catherine, the story-based puzzle game from subsidiary Atlus. Sega has been producing more PC ports, but this teaser only appeared on the Bayonetta page and not a more recent port like Vanquish.
The teaser is just an image of a sheep, paired with the title "Baa." Sheep play an important role in Catherine, as both the name of the Stray Sheep bar that serves as a central location, and as the way the game represents other men besides the protagonist, Vincent.
Catherine uses its puzzle mechanics to tell a relatively adult story about marriage, commitment, and infidelity. The lead character Vincent is facing the decision of whether to marry his longtime girlfriend, Katherine, when he has a chance encounter with a free-spirited woman, Catherine. It features several endings based on the player's choices and a morality meter. A Full Body remake of Catherine was already announced for PS4 and Vita.
"This story-heavy puzzler is mature and occasionally profound, exploring themes like sexual fidelity, personal responsibility, and trust," wrote critic Kevin VanOrd in GameSpot's review. "Catherine doesn't just challenge your hand/eye coordination: It challenges your intellect and your emotions."
January is officially here! While the flow of big releases is slowing down, that doesn't mean there aren't exciting new games coming this month--let alone in 2019 as a whole. There are still a handful of noteworthy games on the way you should keep an eye on.
Headlining January's releases are new installments and re-releases in several classic franchises. The long-awaited Resident Evil 2 remake is set to launch at the end of this month, as well as the climactic conclusion to the Kingdom Hearts series. But if you're in the mood to play older games on current-generation platforms, we're getting remasters/enhanced ports of Tales of Vesperia, Onimusha: Warlords, and New Super Mario Bros. U.
That's only a smattering of this month's releases. You can see all of the biggest games on the way for each platform in January 2019 below. For a look at all of the most notable releases coming in 2019, check out our complete list of game release dates in 2019.
Resident Evil 2 Remake -- January 25 (PS4, Xbox One, PC)
Ever since the outstanding Gamecube remake of Resident Evil 1 in 2002, fans have adamantly requested the same treatment for its much-loved sequel. After years of waiting, Capcom granted this wish when it confirmed development of Resident Evil 2 Remake in August 2015. Resident Evil 2 fans and newcomers, rejoice! We're finally going to be able to play the game this month. It features a host of changes and improvements over the original, such as a new over-the-shoulder camera, revised puzzles, and modernized controls.
Kingdom Hearts III -- January 29 (PS4, Xbox One, PC)
The Kingdom Hearts saga is coming to a close at this end of the month. This much-awaited concluding chapter is looking to wrap up Sora's quest to thwart the evil Xehanort's plan to form a true Organization XIII. Kingdom Hearts III will include new worlds to explore based on Disney and Pixar properties, an expanded party system, mini-games inspired by classic Walt Disney animations, and much more. If you're looking to catch up on previous entries before Kingdom Hearts III releases, we highly recommend the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 Remix on PS4, which collects the majority of the series on a single disc.
New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe -- January 11 (Switch)
The Nintendo Switch is getting a collection containing enhanced ports of both New Super Mario Bros. U and its standalone expansion, New Super Luigi U. While the games remain largely the same, there are a couple new additions. A new character named Toadette is being added, and Nabbit, who you could previously only play in New Super Luigi U, will be playable across both games.
Netflix has confirmed the released date for The Punisher Season 2. Following last week's leak, the streaming giant has confirmed that the Marvel show will return on January 18 and revealed the date announcement in a new teaser trailer.
The teaser doesn't feature any footage from the new season, but instead teases the upcoming confrontation between Frank Castle and Billy Russo--better known as the Punisher's classic nemesis Jigsaw. Actors Jon Bernthal and Ben Barnes provide an intense voiceover that suggest that this will be a fight to the death--check it out above.
While there is much anticipation for The Punisher Season 2, the future of the show is unclear. In recent months, three of Netflix's roster of Marvel shows have been cancelled. While the axing of Iron Fist and Luke Cage weren't necessarily surprising, the cancelation of Daredevil within a few weeks of the acclaimed Season 3 hitting the service suggested that Netflix is looking to drop all of its Marvel shows.
Disney is launching its own streaming platform, named Disney+, later this year and is developing several Marvel series for it. Netflix still officially has The Punisher and Jessica Jones as active shows, and Season 3 of the latter is expected later this year. However, it remains possible that both will be cancelled once these latest seasons have been released.
In terms of new Marvel shows, in November Disney confirmed that Tom Hiddleston will star in a Loki show for Disney+. In addition, it has been reported that a Falcon and Winter Soldier team-up series is in development, and there are also rumors of a Scarlet Witch show.
Fortnite's Season 7, Week 5 is in full swing, and among them there are a couple of tricky challenges. Both of these are exclusive to those that have paid for a Battle Pass, with the first tasking players with searching a specific location for a Battle Star (we've got a guide for that), while the second is a multi-stage quest that involves dancing on towers.
The quest begins by asking players to dance on a Water Tower. Once the first part of the challenge is complete, it'll be updated and direct players to dance on top of a Ranger Tower, and then on top of an Air Traffic Control Tower. So, three in total, and although they're pretty easy to spot, you'll need to be in their general vicinity first.
To make things easier for you, we've put together a map of where you can find each of the towers, as well as listed their locations below. All you've got to do is either land on or build up to the top of the towers and then bust a move.
Fortnite Tower Locations
Water Tower: Can be found at Retail Row
Ranger Tower: Can be found at Lonely Lodge
Air Traffic Control Tower: Can be found at Frosty Flights
With this challenge and the "Search Between" challenge mentioned above completed, you've done all the hard work for the week. All that remains is mopping up the rest, which will just require you to have solid Fortnite fundamentals and put some time into the game.
If you've got outstanding challenges from previous weeks, you can use our comprehensive Fortnite Season 7 challenge guide for a full breakdown on every challenge that has been featured so far, as well as links to guides for the more difficult challenges for each week.
Cult movie star and character actor Bruce Campbell is rebooting the TV series Ripley's Believe It Or Not for The Travel Channel. The channel has ordered 10 episodes, one hour each, that will be hosted by Campbell. He's also serving as executive producer.
The new episodes will be shot on location at the Ripley Warehouse in Florida and will tell "astonishing, real, and one-of-a-kind stories" from around the globe. It's set to premiere in Summer 2019. The launch this year makes it mark the 100-year anniversary of the Ripley's Believe It Or Not brand.
This will be the fifth series in all. The first aired on NBC in 1949 and was hosted by Robert L. Ripley, the namesake of the show. It has since been revived or rebooted by several networks over the years, with hosts like Jack Palance and Dean Cain. It even had an animated series.
Most recently, Campbell has appeared as a series regular on the AMC series Lodge 49, and reprised his iconic role as the monster-hunter in the Starz series Ash vs. Evil Dead.
"Travel Channel fans have an insatiable curiosity about the world and sharing this wonderful and weird series with the next generation of fans is a thrill," said general manager Jane Latman, in the announcement. "This entirely new version of Ripley's is a fresh contemporary approach to the odd and unusual and will be jam-packed with larger-than-life characters, cool facts, history and science."
We're in Week 5 of Fortnite Season 7, and that means there's new challenges to be completed. At this point, the challenges aren't exactly a huge surprise, but that doesn't mean they're all super easy to complete. One of the challenges available to those that have a paid Battle Pass, for example, is a bit of a treasure hunt. We've done the leg work and have the exact location of that Battle Star, so you won't have to spend too much time looking.
The challenge in question says "search between a giant rock man, a crowned tomato, and an encircled tree." If you know your way around the map, you'll know that means you need to head southeast of Tomato Temple, just south of the bridge. Now that you have that specific location, the easiest way to get there is to just start a new match, hop out of the Battle Bus at the right time, and plummet down to the island.
Click image to view in full screen
Of course, you'll need to be careful about other players hanging around in the area, as they will want to take you out to complete challenges or work their way to that precious Victory Royale. When you land, make a beeline for the Battle Star and you should be fine, but be prepared to take a few attempts at it if the landing zone is hot.
Take a look above for a map of the exact location and a screenshot from the area where the Battle Star can be found. You can also watch the video above and see us complete the challenge, which will give you a good indication of where to land to maximize your chances of grabbing the Battle Star before being popped by an enemy.
On January 2, Fortnite developer Epic Games released a new update for the game. You can see all the changes, tweaks, and new additions in the full Fortnite update 7.10.2 patch notes. The headliner for the update is the Boom Box item, which does big damage to any built structures. This is a handy item to keep an eye out for, as one of the other challenges for Week 5 asks players to do 5000 points of damage to structures.
Here's what we know so far about Bayonetta 3: Platinum Games is developing it, and Nintendo will publish it as a Switch exclusive. When it will arrive is anyone's guess at this point, however. We saw a teaser trailer during the Game Awards 2017, but the upcoming action title was a no-show at E3 2018. So far, we find ourselves with more questions than answers. Despite the lack of information, you can already lock in your Bayonetta 3 pre-order, and even get a nice discount from one retailer.
The teaser trailer is the only actual Bayonetta 3-related document that's available so far, and it doesn't show any gameplay footage, so it offers few hints. But it does feature the leather-clad heroine wielding dual pistols, her weapons of choice in the previous installments.
Bayonetta 1 & 2 on Switch
Speaking of previous installments, if you're looking to brush up on the series before Bayonetta 3 comes out, $50 gets you a physical copy of Bayonetta 2 on Switch, which comes with a digital code for the first game. For those who prefer digital Switch games, you can buy both titles from the Nintendo Eshop for a total of $60.
But if it's Bayonetta 3 you're after, you have several pre-order options so far. No pre-order bonuses are available at this time, but we'll add them here if that changes in the future.
Fortnite fans will no doubt want to start 2019 off on the right foot by securing themselves a healthy helping of Battle Stars, and it just so happens that there's another batch of challenges now available for them to complete. We're in Week 5 of Season 7 now, so you should know how this goes, but if you're new to it all here's a quick breakdown.
Challenges come in two varieties, with the first free to everyone playing Fortnite's battle royale mode, and the second available exclusively to those that spend V-Bucks to get a premium Battle Pass. By completing challenges you are rewarded with Battle Stars, which in turn upgrade your Battle Pass and make cosmetic unlocks available. If you've got a premium pass, you get the option of doing more challenges and thus can earn more Battle Stars and get new unlocks faster.
In the free category, Week 5's challenges involve dealing damage to an opponent's structures, eliminating an enemy player from a specific distance, and completing a multi-stage challenge that begins with dancing on top of a water tower.
For those with a premium Battle Pass, you'll need to search a location that can be found between a giant rock man, a crowned tomato, and an encircled tree. There's also a challenge that asks you to get three elims with a silenced weapon, along with another that requires you to search chests in Wailing Woods and Paradise Palms. The final challenge in this section is another multi-stager that is activated by landing at Polar Peak. Take a look at the full list of challenges below.
Free
Stage 1: Land at Polar Peak (1) -- 1 Battle Stars
Deal damage to opponent's structures (5000) -- 5 Battle Star
Stage 1: Dance on top of a Water Tower (1) -- 1 Battle Stars
Search chests at Wailing Woods or Paradise Palms (7) -- 5 Battle Star
Search between a giant rock man, a crowned tomato, and an encircled tree (1) -- 10 Battle Stars
Eliminate an opponent from closer than 5m away (3) -- 10 Battle Stars
If you haven't been keeping up with challenges thus far, we've got a very handy Fortnite Season 7 challenge guide that keeps track of all the weekly challenges and provides links to guides for the more difficult ones. Use that to get any outstanding challenges completed and you'll have the unlocks you want in no time.
Fortnite developer Epic Games released a new update for the game on January 2. Along with various tweaks, it introduced the Boom Box, which is an item that does significant damage to built structures. This item is very handy for removing barriers between you and any enemies you may be gunning for. If you're on the receiving end of its destructive power, you can counter by shooting the Boom Box. Check out the full Fortnite update 7.10.2 patch notes for more on the item and the other changes and tweaks.
The UK's best-selling physical video games of 2018 have been revealed, with the usual suspects leading the charts. FIFA 19 came out on top, selling just under 1.9m units.
Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2 was the second-biggest seller, shifting 1.75m copies, while Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 found its way into 1.2m UK homes, placing it at No.3. Sales monitor GfK Chart-Track says the PS4 exclusive Spider-Man--which finished at No.4 in the overall chart--sold more copies than any other exclusive game in 2018. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (No.5), God of War (No.8), and Forza Horizon 4 (No.9) were the other exclusive games to sell well.
Overall, video games now generate more revenue than any other entertainment medium in the UK. The games market has more than doubled in value since 2007, with a large portion of that growth coming from digital sources such as DLC and microtransactions. Digital sales make up over 80% of the UK games market.
"The games industry has been incredibly effective in taking advantage of the potential of digital technology to offer new and compelling forms of entertainment, said CEO of the Entertainment Retailers Association, Kim Bayley. "Despite being the youngest of our three sectors, it is now by far the biggest."
Take a look at the top 20 biggest-selling boxed games of 2018 below. Note this table does not include digital sales data, and so should not be considered representative of all UK game sales.
Lego: The Lord of the Rings and Lego: The Hobbit have been removed from a number of digital storefronts on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. You can no longer buy the games digitally, and their removal could be tied to the expiration of a licensing deal.
Lego: The Lord of the Rings (2012) and Lego: The Hobbit (2014) seemingly require numerous licenses, from the films, Lego toys, and other rights-holders, so it's not a total surprise to see them leave digital stores. Other Lord of the Rings games, like Middle-earth: Shadow of War, remain available to buy, however.
Reddit user SuperMoonky, who first reported the removal of the games, reckons the Lego games might have been removed because they feature dialogue and music that came straight from the movies, while Shadow of War does not do this.
Outside of games, Amazon is producing a very expensive Lord of the Rings TV show that is set long before the events of the movies. Additionally, a movie about author J.R.R. Tolkien and his wife Edith Bratt is in the works with Nicholas Hoult and Lily Collins.
In a update posted on the game's Kickstarter page, developer Koji Igarashi said the studio made the "tough decision" to cancel the Mac and Linux editions "due to challenges of supporting middleware and online feature support and making sure we deliver on the rest of the scope for the game."
People who backed the game looking for a Mac or Linux version will be given the opportunity to change platforms; you can send an email to request a platform change; be sure to submit the request with the email address association with your pledge.
"We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and we hope for your understanding," the developer said.
It's unclear if refunds will be available or if the only option is to switch platforms.
Also in the blog post, Igarashi said development on Ritual of the Night has "reached its peak," which sounds like it's nearly finished.
"We are currently checking the performance of Bloodstained on each platform. Overall, we are done with enemy placement and entering the adjustment phase. But there are still many progression-blocking bugs that must be taken care of," he said.
Igarashi worked at Konami for a long time, and there he worked on games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Ritual of the Night is said to be a spiritual successor to that game.
Ritual of the Night is due out sometime in 2019 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC. The game raised more than $5.5 million from its crowdfunding campaign back in 2015.
2018 was a big year for streamer Ninja, whose real name is Tyler Blevins. While he was already an established name in the gaming world having competed as a professional Halo player for years, Ninja entered a new stratosphere of success in 2018 following his record-breaking Fortnite stream with rapper Drake.
He's ridden that wave and prospered financially. He told CNN in an interview that he made nearly $10 million in 2018. He told the site that 70 percent of his revenue came from Twitch and YouTube, through ads and subscriptions, with the remainder coming from his sponsorship deals with companies like Samsung, Uber Eats, and Red Bull.
The $10 million figure cited in the CNN piece is likely pre-tax, so more than likely he did not take home that much at the end of the day. Still, it's an eye-watering figure.
In March, Ninja said he was making around $500,000 every month from his various revenue sources.
Ninja told CNN that he spends around 12 hours each day streaming, and in 2018, he estimates he played around 4,000 hours of Fortnite; that's about 140 days.
He's enjoyed success among mainstream audiences this year through his appearance on Jimmy Fallon's late night TV show and as a cover star of ESPN the Magazine.
Ninja said he thinks Fortnite still has lots of room to grow, but in the event that Fortnite loses steam, the streamer is diversifying through efforts like a Ninja-branded clothing line.
2018 wasn't a blemish-free year for Ninja, as he stirred controversy when he told Polygon that he wouldn't stream games with women to avoid dating rumours.
The long-running and wildly popular American sitcom The Big Bang Theory is ending with its current 12th season, and now we've learned more details about how it will wrap up. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Harold & Kumar actor Kal Penn and Lord of the Rings star Sean Astin will guest-star in the show's final season.
Penn and Astin will play physicists who by accident confirm Sheldon and Amy's super-asymmetry theory, which could have a major impact on how things turn out. There is no word yet on when the episode featuring Penn and Astin will air.
Season 11 averaged 14 million viewers per episode, making it one of the most popular shows on TV, according to Variety. A spinoff, Young Sheldon, premiered in 2017.
True Detective Season 3's release date is drawing ever closer--the series returns to HBO for its Season 3 premiere on January 13. For True Detective fans, that comes with some trepidation, as the general consensus is that the show's second season in 2015 did not live up to the high bar set by Season 1. But there's some hope: True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto said during a recent press conference that he didn't shy away from the backlash against Season 2.
"I understood that there was a lot of stuff in Season 2 that people hadn't really wanted to see, based on Season 1 of True Detective, but I'm very proud of the work everybody did," he told a room of journalists. "I just try to keep getting better at what I do, and move forward, and I think substantive criticism is a big part of that, so I try not to shut myself off from any of it, and really just try to get better."
He added that for True Detective Season 3, he wanted to "narrow the focus" of what they're trying to do, and he emphasized that creating the show is "a big team effort."
True Detective Season 3 focuses on Wayne Hays, a detective played by Mahershala Ali, and a single investigation that spans three separate time periods: 1980, 1990, and 2015. Hays remains the focus in all three settings, which made for unique challenges in every aspect of this season's creation, from the writing to Ali's multi-faceted performance of the same character at three very different points in his life.
Pizzolatto said he started with the character, Wayne Hays, "and the desire to tell a man's life story in the form of a detective story." In the most recent setting, Hays is beginning to suffer from dementia, and he struggles to recall aspects of the case. "If he's losing his life story near the end of his life, then who he is becomes a mystery to himself, in a way," Pizzolatto said.
With those ideas and themes in place, Pizzolatto began to conceive of the case itself, in which two children go missing in the Arkansas Ozarks. "I wanted a case that it was possible could be revisited over these three separate timelines, so there would have to be an element that was unresolved in each of those timelines," he said. "And I also wanted something that was--even though there is that murder, something that was less sensationalistically violent and perhaps more closely tied to the idea of family, because so much of the case would ultimately impact this character's family and haunt the family in its own way...It kind of haunted me the more I thought about it."
Comparisons with True Detective's beloved Season 1 will be inevitable, but Pizzolatto said Season 3 is vastly different--both structurally and thematically--from the original eight episodes, which aired all the way back in 2014.
"It's a much, much more complicated structural thing we all tried to do this year than existed in Season 1," he said. "I feel like this one has a lot more light in it than previous seasons, and maybe reaches for hope a bit more. I'm not even sure this is properly 'noir,' given where it goes."
Ali, who was also present during the press conference, added that he thinks the anthology show's treatment of its settings provides a through line between seasons. "Your setting is always a character in the story in a very real way," the actor said, turning to address Pizzolatto. "Even looking for the children, as the mystery unfolds, we were really with a camera crew hiking 30 minutes to start work, with gear, and finding our location, and then beginning our day's shooting. So to really be in that space, I really can't put words to it, but I will say that I'm confident that it feeds you with something, as an actor, to be in the environment of the real mountains or the caves in which this mystery started."
Season 3's structure seems inherently at odds with its genre, as a mystery is generally dependant on withholding some information from viewers until it's time to make the reveals. With Hays revisiting the case in later time periods, how can the events of earlier ones remains mysterious? How do you keep viewers engaged when huge chunks of the show are set decades after the initial case?
"It was the most challenging thing I'd ever tried to do," Pizzolatto admitted. "When I originally had this idea, I was like, 'Yeah, but how would you even do that?' It's like some impossible math problem, how you keep a mystery going and have these reversals and revelations without cheating the audience and going, 'Well, I could have shown you this, but I just didn't show you.'"
He said one of his goals this season was to have "no tricks up his sleeve"--in other words, not to mislead viewers simply to keep the mystery going. "Because 2015 and 1990 are happening at the same time as 1980, you're sort of constantly being told what is going to happen," he said. "It's telling you everything that's going to happen before it happens. I wanted to be able to do that--to not play any cheap games with the viewer, to respect their attention and their time, but still reward them with revelation and reversal."
With that goal in mind, it seems possible that True Detective Season 3 will swing too far in the other direction. But Pizzolatto said he'd love if viewers restarted Season 3 from the beginning after watching the finale, to pick up on things they missed the first time around.
"I'd love it if they did that, but I don't know," he said, clearly humbled: "I mean, they might get to the end and be like, 'I never want to watch this again.'"
Let's hope, when True Detective Season 3 premieres on HBO on January 13, that isn't the case.
Disney had a monster year in 2018 at the box office. Its movies collectively made $3.092 billion in the United States and $7.325 billion globally, according to a box office roundup by Entertainment Weekly. The domestic box office performance is a new all-time record, while the global result is the second-highest ever, only behind the $7.605 billion that Disney movies collectively made in 2016.
Marvel movies helped Disney's performance substantially in 2018. Avengers: Infinity War raked in $2.049 billion globally, while Black Panther made $1.347 billion worldwide. The Disney Pixar movie Incredibles 2 pulled in $1.24 billion globally, while Ant-Man and the Wasp took in a mighty $623.1 million. New releases Ralph Breaks the Internet and Mary Poppins Returns are also expected to be big-time money-makers.
Disney movies were not guaranteed box office smashes in 2018, however, as Solo: A Star Wars Story took in $393.6 million worldwide--the worst result in the history of the Star Wars series. The Oprah-starring A Wrinkle in Time, meanwhile, only made $132.9 million worldwide.
Disney is expected to have another massive year in 2019 thanks to major new releases like Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame from Marvel, along with new live-action versions of Aladdin, Dumbo, and The Lion King. Disney also has Toy Story 4 coming up this year from Pixar, while the long-awaited Frozen 2 hits theatres just before Thanksgiving, and it's expected to be a huge success. On top of those, the final entry in the new Star Wars trilogy, Episode IX, comes to theaters in December 2019.
What's more, Disney is buying many of competitor Fox's assets, including Deadpool and X-Men, so even bigger box office returns in the future are expected.
If the established rotation for which developer is responsible for each Call of Duty game continues into 2019, then it's Infinity Ward's turn next. And a recent tweet of a skull by the company's senior communication manager Ashton Williams may confirm that it is Infinity Ward that's at the helm and also hint at what the next Call of Duty title might be. Although there was no accompanying text, the skull itself could imply that Infinity Ward is working on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.
Since Infinity Ward is the developer behind Call of Duty: Ghosts, many first suspected the tweet was teasing Ghosts 2. However, Kotaku's Jason Schreier has since claimed in a forum post that isn't the case. Prior to Ghosts and Infinite Warfare, Infinity Ward was responsible for the widely popular Modern Warfare series. Fans may recall that one of the major characters from Modern Warfare 2, Lieutenant Simon "Ghost" Riley, wore a skull-patterned balaclava. Williams' tweet may be in reference to that, which could mean there's a Modern Warfare sequel starring the character scheduled for 2019.
However, considering the popularity of Modern Warfare Remastered, Williams tweet could instead just as easily be a hint that a remaster for Modern Warfare 2 is in the works as well. Infinity Ward released Modern Warfare Remastered alongside Infinite Warfare, so the developer could be planning to do something similar with whatever new game is planned. This is all conjecture though, and the tweet could just as easily be a tease for a brand-new Call of Duty series that has nothing to do with Modern Warfare.
Treyarch's 2018 Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 was the first game in the franchise to not feature a traditional single-player campaign. Instead, Black Ops 4 included the franchise's first battle royale mode, titled Blackout. There hasn't been an announcement of whether 2019's Call of Duty will implement either of these changes.
Pokemon Go's first in-game event of 2019 is now underway. Developer Niantic has kicked off the Adventure Sync Hatchathon, which is scheduled to run until January 15 and will reward players with extra Candy and Stardust for hatching Eggs.
During the event, you'll be able to earn twice the normal amount of Stardust and Candy for each Pokemon Egg you hatch. On top of that, Niantic says you will have a higher likelihood of receiving 5 and 10 km Eggs--which can hatch into Pokemon like Elekid, Magby, and Chansey--by spinning the Photo Disc at PokeStops and Gyms.
Adventure Sync is one of the many new features Niantic introduced to Pokemon Go in 2018. When enabled in the settings menu, it allows the game to keep track of the distance you've walked even when it's idle, making it much easier--and much less taxing on your phone's battery--to hatch Eggs.
Before the Hatchathon ends, Niantic will host Pokemon Go's first Community Day of 2019. That event takes place on Saturday, January 12, and features increased spawns of the Gen 2 starter Totodile. Moreover, you'll be hatch Eggs at a quarter of their typical required distance during the Community Day, which means you'll potentially be able to earn a ton of Stardust and Candy thanks to the ongoing Hatchathon bonuses.
With January's arrival, Niantic rolled out a new set of Field Research tasks for Pokemon Go. As in December, completing enough of these to achieve a Research Breakthrough can lead to an encounter with one of several Legendary Pokemon, including two new possibilities: Ho-Oh and Lugia. Meanwhile, the game's latest Legendary, Heatran, will remain available in Raid Battles until January 15.
What might be considered the first episode of Black Mirror's fifth season, Bandersnatch, is out now on Netflix. But thanks to that episode and what a huge undertaking it was, we'll have to wait for the rest the next installment of creator Charlie Brooker's sci-fi series.
Bandersnatch debuted on Netflix on December 29 after a two-year effort, and anyone who's spent a little time with it can see why its creation took so long: it's a choose-your-own-adventure story, in which the viewer makes decisions about how the story will go at key intervals. Certain decisions trigger endings to the story, or automatically dial the viewer back to earlier points to make different choices so things don't go quite so badly (or, since this is Black Mirror, sometimes worse).
All those choices and alternate storylines meant that Black Mirror is more like four episodes of the show, Brooker told The Hollywood Reporter. And making it took so much doing that the rest of the season has been pushed a little deeper into 2019--although just when this year it'll actually see release on Netflix has not yet been announced.
"We knew going into it that it would be difficult and challenging and more complicated than a normal film that we would do. Even then, we underestimated," Brooker told THR. "As the story expanded, I like to say that the story got longer and it got wider. So the whole thing started expanding a bit like an inflatable life raft in a small room."
Though, like all Black Mirror episodes, Bandersnatch is a standalone story, it may well have an influence on the future of the series. Brooker said in the interview that Colin Ritman (Will Poulter), one of the characters in Bandersnatch, could show up in future Black Mirror episodes.
That discussion is a bit of a spoiler, so read on at your own risk.
In Bandersnatch, Colin suggests that the various choices and different storylines viewers are seeing are the result of multiple realities that influence each other. That would play into the meta view of the Black Mirror series as a whole, which is filled with self-referential Easter eggs even though all of the stories seem to take place in versions of our world that don't share common technology or people. If Colin is right about his idea of multiple realities existing together, as Bandersnatch suggests, then seeing him in other Black Mirror episodes could extend that multiverse theory to the entire series.
"Ostensibly, he could go on forever, because he's both dead and not dead," Brooker said. "I like the idea that he could show up anywhere. I could see him popping up in 'San Junipero' or running around in 'White Bear.'"
Still, we're stuck waiting to find out when we'll see any more Black Mirror, whether Bandersnatch's characters make it into the rest of the season or not.
Actor Jack Black has launched a YouTube channel dedicated in part to gaming, and it's proving to be wildly popular before he's even uploaded any kind of substantial content. Black launched his new channel, Jablinski Games, on December 21, and it took just a week for it to reach 1 million subscribers. After 10 days, the channel is up to more than 2.5 million subscribers, so it's definitely off to a very good start.
Probably jokingly, Black said Jablinski Games will be bigger than Ninja and PewDiePie. He plans to upload new videos every Friday, and in addition to games, Black's videos will focus on food and life. His second video, released on December 25, was posted in celebration of Jablinski Games reaching 1 billion errrr 1 million subscribers.
It remains to be seen what form Black's videos will take or if he'll have guests. Whatever the case, the videos will surely be wacky, given the tone and direction of the two teasers we've seen so far.
Black is of course no stranger to video games. He starred as Eddie Riggs in Double Fine's 2009 action game Brutal Legend. He also voiced a character in Double Fine's crowdfunded game Broken Age.
Outside of games, Black, 49, is a major film star whose credits include School of Rock, King Kong, the Kung Fu Panda series, and most recently Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. He's also an accomplished musician; he sings and plays guitar in the band Tenacious D with Kyle Gass.
The new Sandra Bullock Netflix movie Bird Box has proven to be incredibly popular, but now the streaming giant has issued a warning to viewers about it.
In the film, Bullock and others wear blindfolds so they can't see the horrors in the world that cause people to kill themselves. In real life, people are blindfolding themselves and doing regular stuff in what's been labeled the BirdBoxChallenge.
As you'd expect, wearing a blindfold while walking down the street or through the woods can be problematic. There are already countless videos of people getting physically hurt partaking in the challenge, and now Netflix has urged people to be careful. "Can't believe I have to say this, but: PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE," Netflix said in a statement on Twitter.
"We don't know how this started, and we appreciate the love, but Boy and Girl have just one wish for 2019 and it is that you not end up in the hospital due to memes."
Can't believe I have to say this, but: PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE. We don't know how this started, and we appreciate the love, but Boy and Girl have just one wish for 2019 and it is that you not end up in the hospital due to memes.
Now that 2018 is officially behind us, Amazon has revealed its 100 best-selling video game items of the past year. As usual, the list encompasses all of the gaming-related products the online retailer sold in 2018, from peripherals and accessories to gift cards and subscriptions, but the most popular game item in any category was Switch's big holiday exclusive, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Nintendo's new mascot brawler was both Amazon's best-selling video game and the retailer's overall best-selling game product in 2018--a distinction that is all the more impressive considering the title launched less than a month ago. The fighting game has been a major commercial success for Nintendo, setting new sales records for the series around the world shortly after its release. GameSpot also selected it as one of our 10 best video games of 2018.
The remainder of the top 10 games list is almost evenly divided between Switch and PS4 titles. The PS4 version of Rockstar's critically acclaimed open-world western, Red Dead Redemption 2, was Amazon's second-best-selling game of 2018, while Super Mario Party rounded out the top three. Two of 2018's biggest PS4 exclusives, Marvel's Spider-Man and God of War, were No. 4 and No. 9, respectively, while Pokemon: Let's Go Pikachu and the PS4 version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 were No. 7 and No. 8.
The list of overall game products was dominated by gift cards and accessories. You can see Amazon's top 10 best-selling games below. The complete list of the retailer's 100 best-selling game products can be found here.
Amazon's Top 10 Best-Selling Video Games Of 2018
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4)
Super Mario Party
Marvel's Spider-Man
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Super Mario Odyssey
Pokemon: Let's Go Pikachu
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (PS4)
God of War
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Amazon's Top 10 Best-Selling Game Products Of 2018
The recent 14 Days of Fortnite event has wrapped up a bit sooner than some players expected. Epic has acknowledged that it shared an inaccurate date for when the challenges would expire, and it's giving out one of its special rewards to make up for it.
"We apologize for communicating the wrong end date for 14 Days of Fortnite on social channels," Epic wrote on its Twitter account. The company had indicated that players would have time after all 14 days of challenges were offered to complete them all. That turned out not to be the case, much to the chagrin of players who were counting on that extra time to knock out the challenges.
As an apology, Epic will hand out the 14th reward--the Equalizer glider--to anyone who completed at least one of the event's challenges. Those who qualify for the freebie will get the item in the "near future," but an exact time table wasn't shared.
Drop in on the new year in style! 🍾 Complete today's challenge and earn the DJ Glider. pic.twitter.com/vYAmacYPU9
The glider in question features an equalizer on it and some accompanying music that plays while it's deployed. You can get a look at it in action here.
The holidays may be over, but Xbox Game Pass members will be getting new Xbox One games to play at no additional charge in January. Six new games are landing on the service between January 3-10. That's in addition to two late December arrivals Microsoft introduced after the announcement of December's lineup.
December's late additions include Life is Strange Complete Season, which contains all five episodes of the time-manipulating adventure game's first season. A week later, all three episodes of the prequel, Life is Strange: Before the Storm, hit the service. Next, on January 3, subscribers will get access to the first episode of Life is Strange 2 (with the rest of the episodes arriving on the service as they're released).
Also coming to Xbox Game Pass on January 3 are the futuristic dino-survival game Ark: Survival Evolved and the aptly titled Farming Simulator 17, which has you tend crops and livestock while you manage a farm. January 7 sees the addition of the online combat game Absolver, followed on January 10 by Just Cause 3 and the brand-new 3v3 combat game Aftercharge.
Xbox Game Pass lets you download and play over 100 Xbox One games, including first-party titles on the day they're released. That means you can play games like State of Decay 2 and Forza Horizon 4 already, and will gain access to Crackdown 3 when it launches on February 15.
You can sign up for Xbox Game Pass for for $1 for the first month and pay $10 for each additional month. Currently, the service is only available for Xbox One, but Xbox boss Phil Spencer has big plans for the future and wants to see it come to "every device."
One of Fallout 76's most explosive features was temporarily out-of-service recently. A bug rendered players unable to launch nuclear weapons, before Bethesda issued a statement that it was aware and issued a hotfix.
Usually the nuclear launch codes are reset on a weekly basis, every Monday evening, and players have to battle their way through enemies to find the new ones. Codes in hand, they can go to a nuclear silo and launch them at spots on the map to punish other players, or simply give a fresh dose of radiation to a spot and create mutated high-level enemies there.
This week, however, the old codes were still in place, and no longer worked. The changeover took place on New Year's Day. In a statement on Twitter, the company said it's aware of the issue and looking into it. Then, on January 2, the game went down for maintenance and came back up just over an hour later.
#Fallout76 Players: We're aware of and actively investigating an issue with Nuke silo access. Thank you for your patience while we look into this issue.
This is far from the first unexpected hiccup to hit Fallout 76. The game has experienced an ongoing series of issues, from low review scores to controversy over its special edition canvas bags to a personal data leak. The studio hasn't shown any sign of slowing its plans for the game, though. It's still regularly issuing patches and announcing upcoming features, including a new mode without PvP restrictions, and the ability to run your own shop.
Sony isn't messing around with its holiday sale this year. Between now and January 15, you can save up to 70% on nearly 1,700 games, expansions, and digital items for some of the biggest titles of 2018 and beyond. And if you're a PS Plus member, you'll get an even bigger discount on many of the on-sale items. We've already highlighted some of the best PS4 games on sale, and a selection of the best titles available for $5 or less. But now that we've arrived at Week 4 of the sale, a new batch of games has been added, making now a good time to see if anything you want is on discount.
If you're in the market for a big-budget shooter, you can grab Battlefield V for $36. It received high marks in our Battlefield V review and is set to get a decent amount of added content in the coming months--including a battle royale mode. Speaking of add-on content, Prey, one of last year's more overlooked titles, got an expansion called Mooncrash that turns the game into a roguelike experience, complete with randomized loot and procedurally generated enironments. You can get the base game and all of the DLC for just $20 right now in Prey: Digital Deluxe Edition.
The sale also features a whole lot of PS3 and PS Vita games on sale as well. And if you'd like to see just the deals on PSVR games, the PS4 exclusives, or 2018 releases, you can filter those games here. Just make sure you finalize your purchases by January 8, when some of these games go back up to regular price. And note that the sale ends once and for all on January 15.
Slightly Mad Studios CEO Ian Bell has revealed the company is developing a standalone console. Exact hardware and software specs haven't been announced yet, but Bell has provided a few details.
The first mention of the console came via Twitter, when Bell tweeted, "The Mad Box is coming." Bell told Variety that the Mad Box will probably release in about three years and support up to 120 frames-per-second for virtual reality play. "It will support most major VR headsets and those upcoming and the specs will be equivalent to a very fast PC two years from now," Bell wrote. "We're in early talks with manufacturers of components so we can't say much more right now other than we have the designs specced out in detail."
When it comes to games on the console, Bell wrote, "We think exclusives are 'exclusionary' but given that we'll be shipping a cross platform engine to all developers it will be their choice. As of now we have no plans to pay developers 'incentives' to exclude other hardware vendors." He further explained that Slightly Mad Studios thinks "the industry is a little too much of a monopoly or a micro oligopoly," and The Mad Box aims to bring some healthy competition to the console race, which for years has pretty much exclusively been a three-way battle between Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's PlayStation, and Nintendo's hardware.
Bell added that early design builds for the Mad Box will be revealed in about four to six weeks. The Mad Box is planned to release worldwide and be competitively priced in comparison to other upcoming consoles. "We have multiple investors already offering the required funding for us to see the product to completion, but it's still early days and we're looking at the best offers right now," Bell wrote.
2018 saw numerous changes to a lot of gaming hardware, including consoles. Some were good, and others not so much. Check out our report cards for more detailed accounts.
What better way to ring in the new year than with a bunch of new TV shows and movies to binge? Amazon Prime Video is adding a bunch of new titles to its library to kick off 2019, including some very exciting films.
Among the movies coming to Prime this month is 2006's Alpha Dog, Escobar: Paradise Lost, and Fahrenheit 11/9. Additionally, Golden Globe nominee Eighth Grade, which was released in 2018, will arrive on the service on January 13. The most exciting new addition just might be the original Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, though, which was added to Prime on January 1.
As for new TV show additions, the most notable arrivals are of Amazon Prime Video originals. New seasons of Informer and The Grand Tour arrive in January, plus a brand-new series called Four More Shots Please. Additionally, the Prime Video original film Beautiful Boy arrived on January 4.
You can take a look at everything Amazon Prime Video is adding in January below. Make sure you also take a look at Netflix and Hulu's offerings for the month.
Coming to Amazon Prime Video in January
January 1
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Alpha Dog (2006)
Brazil (1985)
Breaking Big, Season 1
First Civilizations, Season 1
Frontline, Season 36
GI Jews: Jewish Americans in World War II (2018)
Going to War (2018)
Jane Eyre (2011)
Nova Wonders, Season 1
Reprisal (2018)
Rwanda: The Royal Tour (2018)
The Art of the Shine (2018)
The Jazz Ambassadors (2018)
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)
January 3
Leave No Trace (2018)
January 4
Beautiful Boy (Prime Original movie)
Sherlock Gnomes (2018)
January 11
Informer (Prime Original series), Season 2
January 12
Final Score
January 13
Eighth Grade (2018)
January 16
The Debt (2010)
January 18
The Grand Tour (Prime Original series), Season 3
January 19
Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018)
January 25
Escobar: Paradise Lost (2014)
Four More Shots Please! (Prime Original series), Season 1
A new in-game event is set to kick off in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate very soon. This week's Spirit Board event is titled Classics, and as its name suggests, it revolves around old-school video game characters.
Throughout the weekend, characters from the NES, Famicom, and the Famicom Disk System--such as the Balloon Fighter and Donkey Kong Jr.--will appear much more frequently on the Spirit Board. You'll also have a chance to get a handful of Legend-class Spirits during the event, including Donkey Kong & Lady, Sukapon, and the NES incarnation of Link.
On top of that, defeating retro characters during the Classics event will net you even more Snacks than usual, which you can use to further level up your Spirits. The event is scheduled to begin at 10 PM PT on January 3 (1 AM ET / 6 AM GMT / 5 PM AEDT on January 4) and will run until the same time on January 6.
Classics follows last week's Mario Time event, which was themed around characters from the Mario series. Unlike other events in the game thus far, it also featured a handful of exclusive Super Mario Party Spirits: Dice Block, River Survival, and Golden Dash Mushroom. These weren't previously available to get in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and there's no word yet on if they'll reappear in the game.
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