The king of fighters is back.
It’s another week of game releases and in case you missed it, SNK has also launched The King of Fighters XIII on Switch.
This title was first revealed in April, with the announcement it would include a “rollback netcode overhaul” to improve online functionality. SNK also previously confirmed a physical, deluxe and collector’s edition packed with all sorts of extra goodies.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
The Amazon Black Friday Sale has officially started, and currently the best deal on a PS5-compatible solid state drive is this Nextorage Japan 2TB PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 solid state drive for only $99.99. Not only is the Crucial P5 Plus fast enough to exceed the specs of the PS5’s stock internal SSD, it also has a preinstalled heatsink that’s slim enough to fit and does a fine job of keeping things cool.
This SSD fulfills all the requisites that make it PS5 compatible. It boasts sequential read and write speeds of 7300MB/s and 6900MB/s, which is much higher than the minimum recommendation of 5,600MB/s. It also includes a robust double-sided aluminum heatsink that’s preinstalled on the SSD. This is much better than some of the cheaper SSDs that only include thin graphite heatspreaders.
There’s an interesting story behind Nextorage Japan. Nextorage describes itself as a company that was “created by a group of ex-Sony engineers and staff with over 20 years of experience in the development of memory and storage products”. Nextorage was actually originally created by Sony in 2019 as an SSD sub-division about a year before the PS5 was released. Presumably this was to be the basis for an official SSD sold by Sony themselves. For whatever reason, Sony decided to ditch that idea and sold this business to another stakeholder in the company, Phison, in 2022. Phison is another large reputable company that specializes in solid state memory controllers. You’ll find their controllers in name-brand SSDs like Seagate, Corsair, and Sabrent. Under Phison, Nextorage Japan eventually accomplished the goal of releasing an SSD catered specifically for the PS5 console in the form of this product right here.
Looking for more Black Friday deals like this? Check out our guide to PS5 Black Friday deals for 2023.
Half-Life turns 25 years old tomorrow, with new maps and updates to celebrate. Valve also reunited the game’s original developers for an hour-long making-of documentary in which its original programmers and artists reminisce about creating the first-person classic at a time when many of them had never shipped a game before.
Chief among the revelations within is that all of Half-Life’s textures were created by a single person, Karen Laur.
“It is such a good example”.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons took the social simulation to new heights when it launched exclusively on the Switch in 2020, and it’s apparently become a source of inspiration for the team at Maxis, who is currently working on the next entry in The Sims series (codenamed “Project Rene“).
Speaking on a Radio Times podcast recently, vice president of franchise creative Lyndsay Pearson mentioned how the development team discussed Animal Crossing “all the time” when talking about The Sims 5’s multiplayer feature. Nintendo’s island entry is supposedly a “good example” of personal spaces and other inventive ideas bringing players together (thanks, IGN):
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Amazon is offering one of the best subscription deals we’re going to see for Black Friday and the holiday season. First time Audible subscribers can get 4 months of Audible Premium Plus membership for only $5.95 per month. That adds up to $23.80. You also get a free $20 credit that’s good for any audiobook at Audible, which means you actually only end up paying about $4 for your entire 4 month subscription. If you’re not sure whether or not you’re eligible, simply click on the link; if you see the promo then you’re eligible and if you don’t then you’re not. This deal ends on Cyber Monday, November 27, so you better hurry!
Audible is a subscription service that gives you access to hundreds of thousands of the best audiobooks without ever having to purchase them. There are two paid membership plans: the lower tier Audible Plus ($7.95/mo) and the higher tier Audible Premium Plus ($14.95/mo). The biggest difference between the two is the size of the audiobook library. Whereas Audible Plus only lets you listen to a selection of about 10,000 audiobooks, the Audible Premium Plus plan gives you access to a whopping 500,000 audiobooks. These include all-time classics like Harry Potter, Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire), Witcher, The Sandman Series, The Lord of the Rings, Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archives, Mistborn, and much more.
Although the seriously expanded library is the main draw of the Audible Premium Plus membership, there are some other nice perks as well. Every month Premium Plus members get to pick one audiobook to keep in their library indefinitely, even after the membership expires. Also, Premium Plus members can get 30% off any additional audiobooks they wish to purchase, in addition to exclusive limited-time discounts.
On a regular day, new subscribers are eligible for a 30-day free trial of either Audible membership. But why settle for one month when you can get four months? If you were planning to purchase a couple of audiobooks anyway, then it makes more sense to jump on this deal and enjoy the subscription at least for a little while.
Looking for more Black Friday deals like this? Check out our guide to Amazon Black Friday deals.
Immortals Of Aveum never looked like it was going to be successful, and it wasn’t. I root for it, however. In an industry where big budget blockbusters are most often sequels, or boringly safe, Aveum feels comparatively bold just by being a self-evidentaly daft first-person mashup of Call Of Duty and Doctor Strange magic powers.
Now it has a demo, so you can try it for free.
The Amazon Black Friday Sale has officially started, and currently the best deal on a PS5-compatible solid state drive is this Crucial P5 Plus 2TB PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 solid state drive for only $94.99. Not only is the Crucial P5 Plus fast enough to exceed the specs of the PS5’s stock internal SSD, it also has a preinstalled heatsink that’s slim enough to fit and does a fine job of keeping things cool.
The Crucial P5 Plus meets all the requirements for your PS5 SSD upgrade. It supports transfer speeds of up to 6,660MB/s which is well above the 5,500MB/s minimum threshold. Yes there are faster SSDs out there, but if your intention is to put this in your PS5, then that extra speed is worthless because you’re bottlenecked by the original PS5 SSD. The integrated heatsink is robust and entirely made of aluminum for effective heat dissipation. It’s also slim enough to fit in the PS5 bay with the cover on. If you’re worried about opening up your PS5 case, don’t worry it’s very easy. Crucial has an official YouTube PS5 SSD install guide.
Looking for more Black Friday deals like this? Check out our guide to PS5 Black Friday deals for 2023.
Believe it or not, Black Friday deals are already in full swing at several of the big retailers. If video game Black Friday deals are what you’re after, you’ve come to the right place. While we’ve already broken them out by platform in other articles, you can find all of the deals gathered together below. That might be handy if you own multiple a PS5 and a Nintendo Switch, for instance.
Shortcuts
There are plenty of PS5 Black Friday deals available at all the major retailers.
This is the new slim PS5 model, and it comes with a free game, either Spider-Man 2 or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
If you’re in the Mario camp, you’ll probably want to know what Nintendo Switch Black Friday deals are available. Quite a few, as it turns out.
Amazon
Best Buy
These are some of the best deals we’ve ever seen on Xbox Series X and Series S.
You won’t find better prices on Xbox controllers any other time of the year. If you want another player or two to join you for local co-op or competition, this is the time to stock up.
Amazon
Best Buy
Whether you have a Series X or Series S (or are in the market for one), you can find some terrific Xbox Black Friday deals at various retailers.
It seems that each year, Amazon’s Black Friday sale has begun going. Best Buy’s Black Friday sale is basically in full force. Walmart’s Black Friday sale will begin soon.
Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN’s board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Threads.
We asked Ridley Scott to pick one favorite shot from each of his movies, as well as one from any other film. The director of Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, Napoleon, and many, many others breaks down each shot for us and explains what makes each so special to him.
“I like the shots prowling around the corridors. I was the operator, so we designed the set just wide enough to get a dolly down or it was all handheld. We built the lights into the set, so the side lights would be attached to a board on the side of the set where you can actually dim them, lower them, and bring in light.
So, in a funny kind of way, that was a fairly new way of doing it. But we built the lights into the set and because I knew everything was going to be more or less handheld, that was the shot. So moving along there through then seeing the corridor, seeing the empty ship was kind of beautiful. It’s a haunted house. Alien, to me, was kind of really a B-movie, done in an A-plus way.”
“The opening shot. That’s the stunner and that is almost entirely Doug Trumbull and his team. I’d drawn the impossible, a dilapidated city and a ruined future. That’s what we’re doing, because of where we’d been heading for a while now. I think we’re trying to do a U-turn, I hope we’re not too late.
And so from that, the set itself was no bigger than this room. All those effects were done 65 mm on tracks. There are 17 passes on one negative. So, you’re tracking one, come back, track it again, and you’re exposing different parts of your negative. It’s a remarkable piece because it’s not digital, there’s no digital work there at all. It’s 17 passes on a negative.”
“The hand on wheat. The hand was on the last day print of photography in Tuscany, and I’d finished the movie and I’d gone to Tuscany to do heaven. I couldn’t possibly have dry ice with people walking in 48 frames a second, right? Can’t do that.
But what we found was a wheat field. I thought, “Wow, that’s interesting” Not vines, wheat. And in the wheat is this man wading through this high corn to meet his wife and child down the slope, way down the hill. And so, we followed him. As he was standing there, he was smoking in the corn. I said, “Stop smoking. It’s 40 degrees. Are you kidding me?!” As he walked out, he did this with his hand (gestures hand brushing the top of the wheat). I said, “Stop.”
So you’ve always got to keep your eyes open for a shot. We got the steady cam and followed the hand. That became the opening shot of the movie. So, in a funny kind of way, it becomes a symbol, a metaphor for immortality, going to heaven.”
“The four helicopters coming in over the city and landing in the high street. That’s all one shot. That’s real and it’s the first time I used 11 cameras. That’s with a guy called Slavimir Izak, and he said, “I hate the sunshine and I only work with one camera.” He ended up working in Morocco with 11 cameras. I think he enjoyed it.
I work with great cameramen. You need them. I’m very visual and I can operate as a good operator. That helps me frame things in multi-camera situations. I know what I want, but you still need the cameraman to actually be able to cope with who has what stop and how it’s going to be.”
Was it hard to make a helicopter war action film and not have Apocalypse Now in the back of your mind?
“No, I never thought about that, but that was a great shot. The music was fantastic, but the shot was good too.”
“Funny thing, I liked the scene coming out of his house, looking across the buildings to him going through to break the ice to wash. I’d just thought that looked so real and so medieval. I love that, yeah. The Forge, we built the village and forge, but the castle in the background was real. We went in there for the dining room scene in the long version. We just went in there, lit the fire, and did the scene. I’ve got a good eye. I’m born with a good eye.”
“The 360 track around our man sitting there, contemplating his death. He’s sitting in a spacesuit and we just do a full walk around him showing the impossibility of where he is. He ain’t going to get out.”
As a rule, do you prefer working with physical sets and natural conditions rather than CGI?
“No, I use CGI as a tool. It’s a tool. I mean, of course, sometimes doing the big battle scenes, if I’ve got 400 extras in a row like this, I’m shooting along them. It’s very easy. 400 is a lot of people, like, 200 meters. Add another 20,000 troops digitally. So you need that. Same with the horses.”
“There are many, actually. The best shot is the very high wide shot looking from the forest across the lake and you have the small figure of Napoleon and his officers all standing, waiting there. That’s pretty impressive. You get the scale of the lake. The lake is an airfield just outside of London. The forest is somewhere else near Gatwick Airport.”
Am I right in thinking that’s the same location as the opening of Gladiator?
“It is indeed. It’s where Marcus Aurelius sat on his horse. We found a forest for Gladiator and the guy said you can do what you want. You can burn it and rip it down. He says, “Because these trees haven’t grown the way we want them, the soil is too sandy, so do what you want.” And so we went in and we did the battle scene. It suddenly became the most valuable location near London. So it is been used again, and again, and again.”
“The Searchers. John Wayne walking through the door in silhouette out onto the desert. I think the film is still the best Western ever made. The thing that The Searchers got right was the space and time. The time it takes to ride the landscape. The time it takes to go somewhere. Where he says, “We’re going off.” And he says, “I’ll see you in a year,” and you are all on horseback. I mean, it’s such a different universe. It’s almost like science fiction.”
Simon Cardy also thinks the opening shot of Blade Runner is a stunner. Follow him on Twitter at @CardySimon.
For the first time since its 2017 debut, the consistently well-selling Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is no longer one of the top 20 best selling games in the United States for a given month.
Okay, that’s a bit of a word salad – but it’s a notable dethroning. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe first released in April of 2017, when it naturally topped The NPD Group’s (now Circana’s) list of the best-selling games in the US for that month. Ever since that month, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has appeared in the top 20 best selling games in the US, which Circana tracks by dollar sales.
But as GamesIndustry.biz noticed today, for the month of October, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was gone. Its reign in the top 20 lasted a whopping 78 consecutive months, which feels like it must be some kind of record. We reached out to Circana for comment, and analyst Mat Piscatella confirmed GamesIndustry’s discovery. While he couldn’t confirm it was an all-time record for longest consecutive run in the top 20 (he’d have to look all the way back to 1995 to be absolutely sure), Piscatella said “technically it likely is”. But he also noted that if Grand Theft Auto 5 sales were still included in the chart “it may be a different story.” Take-Two stopped reporting digital sales to the NPD group in 2020, causing GTA 5 and multiple annual sports franchises to disappear from its charts.
It’s possible, even likely, that Mario Kart makes a return to the top in a later month. Its departure in October was likely impacted by the sheer number of brand new releases cracking the top 20 that month, including Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (#1), Super Mario Bros. Wonder (#2), Assassin’s Creed: Mirage (#3), UFC 5 (#7), NHL 24 (#8), Sonic Superstars (#9), Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 (#12), Forza Motorsport (#17), and Lords of the Fallen (#20). That’s a lot of debut games to beat for a six-year-old game, nevermind that it’s also competing against other recent releases that are still selling well like Madden, Hogwarts Legacy, and Starfield. Given that Mario Kart 8 wasn’t just in the top 20, but actually in the top 10 as recently as August, it’s not shocking that it took an overwhelming month of new releases to push it down the roster.
What’s worth noting too is that it’s entirely possible Mario Kart 8 technically is still in the top 20. Just. Secretly. Nintendo does not report digital sales to Circana, meaning that Mario Kart 8 has stayed in the top 20 for six years on sheer strength of physical sales alone. That will shock no one who has observed the Switch bundle Nintendo loves to offer up for Black Friday year after year, but it’s still an incredible feat. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe also remains Nintendo’s best-selling Nintendo Switch title at 57 million units sold life to date, and the second-best selling Nintendo game ever just after Wii Sports (82.9 million units).
Whatever the case, it seems likely we’ll see Mario Kart 8 Deluxe bounce back into the top 20 again soon. And with Wave 6 of the DLC out earlier this month and another Black Friday sale imminent, Mario Kart 8 isn’t going anywhere…at least not until Nintendo commits to the mythical Mario Kart 9.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
