Category: IGN

Today, Amazon is offering the powerful and high capacity Anker Prime 27,650mAh USB Power Bank for only $124.99, a hefty 31% price drop from its original $180 MSRP. This is the successor to the Anker 737 that we deemed the best Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally charger. Note only does it carry a significant battery capacity, it also boasts an absolutely massive 250W of USB power delivery to charge even the most power hungry MacBooks, iPhones, and handheld gaming consoles (simultaneously, in most cases).

Anker Prime 27,650mAh Power Bank for $124.99

with 250W of USB Type-C Power Delivery

The Anker Prime is a hefy power bank, measuring 6.4″x2″x2.2″ and weighing in at 1.5 pounds. This is a heavier duty power bank designed to charge more power hungry devices like laptops, (multiple) portable gaming systems, and (multiple) phones. It has two USB Type-C ports and one USB Type-A port. Each USB Type C port supports up to 140W of Power Delivery, which is the max charging rate of a new 2024 MacBook Pro 16″ laptop. If you want to use both USB Type-C ports simultaneously, one will charge at 140W and the other at 100W. The USB Type-A port also boasts up to 65W of charging, although that drops to 18W if you’re using both USB Type-C ports at the same time.

The 27,650mAh battery capacity is more than you’ll ever need on your itinerary. It can charge a Nintendo Switch OLED about 6 times, iPhone 15 Pro Max about 6 times, Steam Deck about 5 times, and an ASUS ROG Ally about 10 times. What also makes the Anker Prime unique compared to most other power banks is the LCD digital readout. It displays a lot of useful real-time information like remaining battery capacity, power input, and power output from each port.

Regarding bringing the Anker Prime on airplanes, this power bank outputs 99.54Wh, which meets the TSA requirements for carry-on baggage. Power banks need to be under 100Wh, which means this is the absolutely highest capacity you can bring on board without needing special clearance.

The Anker Prime is an excellent Steam Deck / ASUS ROG Ally charger

Both the ROG Ally and Steam Deck suffer from a short battery life when gaming on the go. For instance, when playing most games at 60 FPS, you’re likely looking at four hours of battery life for the Steam Deck and maybe half that on the ASUS ROG Ally, which is equipped with a measly 2600mAh battery. During our Steam Deck review, we even found games like God of War or Spider-Man could potentially tap out in under 2 hours. At the end of the day, you’ll never get the full potential out of your Steam Deck or ROG Ally if you’re not equipped with a decent portable charger.

The Anker Prime is an outstanding charger for the Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally portable gaming handhelds. The Steam Deck supports up to 38W, the ASUS ROG Ally up to 65W, and the Nintendo Switch up to 18W of power delivery, That means technically you could charge all three gaming consoles at the same time across all three ports. If you’re traveling with a family with multiple Nintendo Switches or Steam Decks, this option will be a lot more convenient than bringing multiple power banks.

As part of the June 2024 Nintendo Direct, Capcom revealed Ace Attorney Investigations Collection which contains remasters of two spin-offs from the series. This includes both Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and Ace Attorney Investigations 2, the latter of which never released outside of Japan. Both games have you controlling Miles Edgeworth and feature characters from throughout the mainline series.

Ace Attorney Investigations Collection will feature updated artwork for a more modern look, but you’ll be able to swap to the original pixel art at anytime. It’s set to release on Nintendo Switch on September 6 of this year.

For everything shown during the stream, be sure to check out our roundup of all the announcements from the June 2024 Nintendo Direct.

This story is developing.

As part of the June 2024 Nintendo Direct announcements, the previously Apple Arcade exclusive RPG Fantasian is coming to Nintendo Switch this holiday season. It is the latest game from developer Mistwalker, which is led by Final Fantasy series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. Fantasian is a full-fledged story-driven RPG with turn-based combat and features music from longtime Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu.

For all the details, check out our roundup of everything announced during the Nintendo Direct.

This story is developing.

Following the cancellation of The Sims-style life sim Life by You, Paradox has now shut down its developer.

Swedish games company Paradox, best known for Crusader Kings, Cities Skylines, and Stellaris, said it had “decided to cease further operations” in Berkeley, California-based Tectonic in a move that affects the studio’s 24 staff.

“This is difficult and drastic news for our colleagues at Tectonic, who’ve worked hard on Life by You’s Early Access release,” Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive, said.

“Sadly, with cancellation of their sole project we have to take the tough decision to close down the studio. We are deeply grateful for their hard work in trying to take Paradox into a new genre.”

Tectonic had worked on Life by You since 2019. It’s the latest in a string of recent failures from Paradox, which Wester has said will spark an evaluation of how the company manages its projects. “We have a very solid financial position and a strong core game portfolio, which keeps us confident about our future,” Wester insisted.

Last year’s disastrous release of Cities Skylines 2, which developer Colossal Order is still working to address, was just one title that hit Paradox’s bottom line as well as its reputation. In October 2023, Paradox called The Lamplighters League a “big disappointment” as it was forced to record a $22 million write-down. Paradox has also delayed jail sim Prison Architect 2 a number of times, the latest to this September after the discovery of “unexpected issues occurring too often.” The Paradox-published Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 has endured a troubled development too, although a release date now looks in sight.

The closure of Tectonic is the latest in a string of studio closures and layoffs that have hit the video game industry hard in recent years. Thousands of staff have been impacted by cuts right across the industry, with layoffs at the likes of Microsoft, Sony, and Embracer, to name a few. Just this week Embracer shut down Pieces Interactive after Alone in the Dark failed to meet sales expectations.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Elden Ring creator and FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki has said he won’t allow the devastating video game industry layoffs to affect his studio as long as he’s in charge.

Speaking to PC Gamer, Miyazaki said he can’t 100% guarantee FromSoftware will be safe from job losses — which have so far seen thousands lose their jobs across the likes of Embracer Group, Microsoft, and Sony — but wouldn’t allow it “as long as this company is [his] responsibility.”

FromSoftware is owned by Japanese organization Kadokawa Corporation so the decision isn’t wholly in Miyazaki’s hands, however. Microsoft, for example, shut down Redfall developer Arkane Austin alongside Hi-Fi Rush and Ghostwire Tokyo developer Tango Gameworks in May 2024 despite posting a 17% increase in revenue and $21.9 billion in profit in its latest financial earnings report.

But Miyazaki appeared confident Kadokawa shares his opinion on layoffs. “Speaking to myself and this company, I want to say that this is not something I would wish on the staff at FromSoftware in a million years,” he said. “I’m pretty sure our parent company Kadokawa understands that and shares that view.”

He then referenced former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, who famously took a pay cut himself when profits were down instead of resorting to layoffs. “I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world,” Iwata said at the time.

Miyazaki echoed this statement. “I think it was the old ex-president of Nintendo, Iwata, who said ‘people who are afraid of losing their jobs are afraid of making good things.’ I’m paraphrasing that, but I totally share this view,” he said.

“I think it’s true, and I think the people at Kadokawa, our parent company, understand that I hold this view very strongly. While we can’t say 100% — we can’t say with complete certainty what the future’s going to hold for From and Kadokawa — at least as long as this company is my responsibility, that’s something I would not let happen. So hopefully our players and our fans can take a little bit of assurance from that.”

Miyazaki’s comments come just as Embracer shut down Alone in the Dark developer Pieces Interactive after the game failed to meet expectations. Pieces Interactive joins Free Radical Design, Onoma, and Volition Games as studios closed by Embracer in the last year amid layoffs affecting thousands of employees.

Image credit: Daniel Boczarski / Contributor at Getty Images

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Amid the increasing popularity of the Fallout franchise, some fans have called on Bethesda to remake the much-loved first two games in the series — but according to Bethesda Game Studios chief Todd Howard that’s not on the cards.

In an interview with YouTube channel MrMattyPlays, Howard said that some of the charm of Fallout 1 and 2 has to do with the fact they remain firmly rooted in the old-school PC role-playing game era of the mid-to-late 90s, so he’s happy to leave them where there while ensuring they run well.

“The main priority for us is to make sure they’re available and you can still play them,” Howard said. “So on the PC obviously they’re there for people to go and get and play, and making sure that they run okay. As far as beyond that, we’ve talked about it, but our priorities in terms of, hey let’s go do dev work and make certain things work, they haven’t been in those areas. So again, priority is, hey can people load it up and play it?

“We want it to load up and run well. The rest of it, I could argue some of the charm of games from that era and the original Fallouts is a little bit of that age. I would never want to paste over some of that with, well we changed how this works so it’s more modern. So as long as you can download it, as long as it loads up and runs, I’d like people to experience it the way it was.”

Led by Interplay producer Tim Cain, the original Fallout games enjoyed critical and commercial success on PC before the company collapsed. Elder Scrolls developer Bethesda later picked up the rights to the franchise and went on to release Fallout 3 in 2008, bringing the post-apocalyptic series into first-person and full 3D.

Despite their age and archaic design, Fallout 1 and 2 remain much-loved by fans of the series, and are often held up as two of the greatest role-playing games ever released. Indeed the recent franchise boost fueled by Amazon Prime’s breakout Fallout TV show affected the original games as well as the modern titles with increased player numbers across Steam.

And so, the calls to modernize Fallout 1 and 2 are louder than ever, but clearly Howard has more pressing matters to attend to, including ongoing updates for Fallout 76 and, eventually, Fallout 5, which is set to come out after The Elder Scrolls 6.

Howard even ruled out bringing Fallout 1 and 2 to console. “Anything is possible, but that’s going to be a longer dev throw,” he replied when asked if such a port were even possible. “And you have to ask yourself, is that where we want to put our time right now? Or is it best played the way it was on a PC? Right now, if you ask me, the best way to play it is on a PC, mouse and keyboard, the way it was.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has followed up last week’s release of the game’s big balance update and premium warbond with a new patch that applies a long list of fixes.

The highlight is a fix for the Spear support stratagem, which has suffered all sorts of problems since the PC and PlayStation 5 co-op shooter launched earlier this year. What should be a reliable monster of a weapon has for so long been fickle, with its anti-tank homing missile failing to properly track locked-on targets.

According to the update 1.000.402 patch notes, there’s a fix for the Spear not targeting several entities (spawners, compound objects, etc). This should encourage more players to bring the Spear onto the battlefield.

And here’s another helpful fix: Hellbombs now get called down facing the player, rather than away from the player. Players have got used to Hellbombs facing away from them, so there will be a bit of unlearning to do with this one.

Arrowhead updated the known issues list, too, outlining what the studio is working on fixing with upcoming patches. Of note: the Bile Titan sometimes does not take damage to the head, and the Charger’s butt does not take damage from explosions. What an arse!

Last week was a big one for Helldivers 2 and Arrowhead, which recently revealed it was in the process of setting the studio up so it could “make more and better stuff” in the long-term. In an introductory post on reddit, new CEO Shams Jorjani, who recently replaced previous Arrowhead CEO and now current Chief Creative Officer Johan Pilestedt, said the studio has had to adjust to the enormous success Helldivers 2 has brought to the company.

Helldivers 2 is the fastest-selling PlayStation game of all time, having shifted an incredible 12 million copies in just 12 weeks since going on sale earlier this year. Amid the huge revenue Helldivers 2 has generated, Arrowhead itself has suffered a number of crises, including launch server problems and, most recently, a battle with Sony itself over the console maker’s controversial attempt to force Steam players to account link to PlayStation Network.

Helldivers 2 update 1.000.402 patch notes:

Overview

For this patch, we have made improvements and changes to the following areas:

• Quality of life improvements
• Crash fixes
• General bug fixes

Fixes

Crashes

• Fixed various crashes that would sometimes occur when changing settings.
• Fixed potential crash or corrupted font texture when changing the language
• Fixed a crash that might occur after exiting a mission.
• Fixed a crash that occurs when opening the social menu with more than 100 friends. As a result we have also limited the friends list visibility to 100. You will remain friends with anyone over 100, but you may not be able to see them if they are offline.
• Fixed crash when opening social menu and having many blocked players and/or friend requests.
• Fixed a crash when minimizing after changing fullscreen mode.
• Fixed rare crash which could occur when picking up equipment.
• Fix a crash when a client interacts with a terminal in a waiting state after host migration.
• Fix a crash related to minefields.

Misc Fixes

• Fix issues with dodge and prone.
• Fix not being able to stand up when wielding the ballistic shield.
• Fixed the Recoilless reload speed.
• Fixed issue where users couldn’t write a description on console when reporting a player.
• Fixes vehicle preview not despawning in Warbonds when quickly scrolling through the catalog.
• Fix Spear not targeting several entities (spawners, compound objects, etc).
• Sentries have a higher destruction value so most explosions do not instantly destroy them regardless of the damage amount.
• Fixed bug where operation progress would be lost when kicked due to inactivity,
• The “Remove Friend” and “Block Player” buttons are now hold-to-confirm instead of a single click.
• Fix bug where dying would try to enter ADS.
• Fix a soft lock if you receive an interact emote while holding a grenade.
• Fix projectile to crosshair inaccuracies in ADS when the player is in different stances
• Fixed broken player model in career tab when on someone else’s ship.
• Adjudicator: fixed incorrect recoil values.
• Fixed armory terminals losing their functionality if the last client player who interacted with them leaves the host’s ship.
• Fix missing localization for flying patrols operation modifiers.
• Fix issue where throwing knives could be left floating in the air.
• Support for non-latin fonts in the game’s install folder path.
• Vehicle skins are now applied to all vehicle variations when equipping directly from Warbonds.
• Fixes flag objectives not properly tracking Helldiver’s position while on a Combat Walker.
• PH-202 Twigsnapper helmet: fixed missing description.
• Fixed the issue where the shuttle would clip through Bile Titans and terrain during landing sequences.
• Improved performance on PS5 when CPU bound
• Fixes FX remaining when destroying Spore Spewer
• Ensure stim vfx remains on screen for the entire duration of the stim effect when med-kit bonus is present.
• Fix for emote receiver players being able to use their weapons during emote animation
• Hellbombs now get called down facing the player, rather than away from the player.

Known Issues

These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.

• Sending friend requests via friend code in game currently does not work.
• Players may be unable to be joined or invited to the game.
• Players added to the ‘Recent Players’ list will appear in the middle of the list.
• Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts.
• Available Operations are generated again after reconnecting after getting AFK kicked.
• Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions.
• Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire.
• Most weapons shoot below the crosshair when aiming down the sights.
• Plasma Punisher is unable to shoot out of the shield generators.
• Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
• “Hand Carts” ship module does not reduce Shield Generator Pack’s cooldown.
• Bile Titan sometimes does not take damage to the head.
• Charger’s butt does not take damage from explosions.
• Players may become stuck in the Loadout when joining a game in progress.
• Reinforcement may not be available for players who join a game in progress.
• Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.
• “Raise Flag of Super Earth” objective does not show a progress bar.
• Mission count in the Career tab is being reset to zero after every game restart.
• Some weapons’ descriptions are out-of-date and don’t reflect their current design.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Paradox Interactive announced that its long-delayed The Sims-style life sim Life by You is officially canceled in a post on their website today.

Life by You was initially announced in May of 2023. At the time, an early access release was planned for September of that year. It was initially delayed to May of 2024, then in February, Paradox announced an additional delay, pushing Life by You’s Early Access release to June 4th. Two weeks before the June 4 release, it was delayed again, this time without a release date, because, in the words of Paradox Deputy CEO Mattias Lilja, “additional time [was] needed.”

Paradox Interactive released a statement from CEO Fredrik Wester explaining the decision on its website. The full statement is as follows:

Paradox Interactive (Paradox) has today decided to cancel the release of the game Life by You. This means that the second quarter of 2024 will be impacted negatively by MSEK 208 from the write-down of the game’s total capitalized development costs.

For a long time, we’ve held hopes for Life by You and the potential we saw in it, but it is now clear that the game will not be able to meet our expectations. A version that we’d be satisfied with is too far away, and therefore we are taking the difficult decision to cancel the release. Moving forward, we should perform at a much higher level, and it’s obvious that we have work ahead of us, said Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive.

We’ve performed poorly in recent releases, continued Wester. Even though we now start new projects in a different manner, it is clear that we must make further changes so that quality is more consistent and the promises we make to our players are met. We have to evaluate how we manage projects and how we organize, for we will and must get better. We have a very solid financial position and a strong core game portfolio, which keeps us confident about our future.

This disclosure contains information that Paradox Interactive AB is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation (EU nr 596/2014). The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person, on 17-06-2024 21:45 CET.

Bethesda Softworks head Todd Howard knows fans are looking forward to Fallout 5, especially in the wake of the Prime Video show’s success, but he isn’t interested in rushing it out the door.

Howard opened up about the future of the hit post-apocalyptic RPG series during an interview with YouTube content creator MrMattyPlays. He says Bethesda spends a lot of time plotting out how to handle the direction of its franchises.

“For other Fallout games in the future, you know, obviously I can’t talk about those right now, but I would say, sort of rushing through them, or we kind of need to get stuff out that is different than the work we’re doing in 76…we don’t feel like we need to rush any of that,” he said. “The Fallout TV show fills a certain niche in terms of the franchise and storytelling.”