Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund Raises Stake In Nintendo To 6%

Up from just over 5%.

It has been announced that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, or PIF, has upped its previous stake in Nintendo from 5.01% to 6.07%.

As reported by Reuters (thanks, GoNintendo), the sovereign wealth fund increased its previous ownership stake in the Kyoto company by 1.06%, as revealed today in a Japanese report filing.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Random: Twitch Chat Beats “Every Single Sport” In Wii Sports

It even got a home run in baseball.

We’ve seen Twitch chat beat games like Pokémon and even The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but how about a more active game? Over the holiday break, Twitch and variety streamer GappyV decided to invent the ultimate test – creating code that converted basic messages into Wii Remote and Nunchuk inputs to see if Twitch chat could “beat” all five games in Wii Sports.

While there were definitely some teething issues, once Twitch chat got the hang of each sport, it was mostly a success. Baseball ended up being the highlight. While it was quite a challenge for chat to get the hang of batting, in the end, it managed to get a home run. You can watch it all unfold in the video above.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

New ‘Kirby’s Return To Dream Land Deluxe’ Website Shows Off More Screenshots & Video

Move over Fire Emblem.

We’re now at the tail end of Fire Emblem Engage‘s marketing push – with the game arriving next week, and it seems Nintendo is already turning its attention towards the return of the pink puffball, Kirby.

After the successful release of his first ever 3D platformer in March last year, Nintendo now has Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe locked in for next month. This title originally made its debut on the Wii in 2011 and arrives on Switch on 24th February.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Splatoon 3 Expected To Receive New Balance Patch Update Soon

Here’s your friendly reminder.

Nintendo dropped an absolutely massive update for Splatoon 3 last November – bumping the game up to Version 2.0.0 and adding new features, improvements and adjustments. It followed with another minor update, so when is the next one?

In case you missed it in the 2.0.0 patch notes, there’ll apparently be a balance update rolling out about halfway through Chill Season. Here’s exactly what was mentioned at the time: “Our next update is planned for the middle of Chill Season 2022 and should focus on balance adjustments upon analysis of data from the newly added weapons.”.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Xbox Developer Direct Event Confirmed for January – Unlocked 577

Microsoft confirmed a Developer Direct event for January 25 that will showcase Redfall, Forza Motorsport, Minecraft Legends, and Elder Scrolls Online with a separate standalone event for Starfield coming at a later date. This will be a deep dive into the games with much less presentation and more gameplay according to the team at Xbox. As the titles listed are promised for the first half of 2023 we can’t wait to see more. Plus, the Unlocked crew discusses the big Ubisoft news and some energy-saving options coming to Xbox consoles.

Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 of this week’s episode.

Be sure to check out the latest gameplay from Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty with this month’s IGN First:

Miranda Sanchez is the executive editor of guides at IGN and a member of Podcast Unlocked. She’s a big fan of stationery and fountain pens. You can sometimes find her on Twitter.

The RX 6950 XT, AMD’s former GPU flagship, is down to $730

most powerful graphics cards on the market even after the release of the first Radeon RX 7000 series cards. It is designed for gaming enthusiasts, content creators, and professionals who demand the highest levels of performance from their graphics card – and now that the next gen is out, this bleeding-edge card has been heavily reduced. In fact, you can now pick this up on Amazon for $730, a $370 reduction from the $1100 price this XFX Speedster Merc319 card launched at in August last year.

Read more

Deal Alert: Save 40% Off the Wingspan Board Game from Stonemaier Games

For a limited time, Amazon is offering the excellent Wingspan board game for only $38.81. That’s a substantial 40% off the original retail price of $65. If you missed the deal on Black Friday, this is another chance for you to pick up a highly rated and very accessible board game for a deal-worthy price.

Wingspan Board Game for $38.81

Wingspan from Stonemeier Games is an incredibly good board game. So good in fact that we deemed it the best board game of 2019. Wingspan looks like a deceptively simple game; the endgame goal is to attract as many birds as you can to your wildlife preserve and help them proliferate. There are only four actions you can perform: draw a bird card, play a bird card, get food, and lay eggs. Sounds simple enough, right? Well let’s just say these four actions mask an incredibly complex engine-building game with which you will have to juggle between bringing new birds into the fold and keeping your existing birds well stocked and in a breeding frenzy. Wingspan is infinitely replayable, and you’ll find yourself developing and honing new strategies with every subsequent playthough.

It certainly helps that this is a very accessible game for both casuals and enthusiasts. The board game design is gorgeous, featuring over 170 detailed bird illustations by Elizabeth Hargrave, charming game board backdrops, and cute little tokens and egg minatures. The rules are easy to follow, and each game lasts about an hour, so you won’t need to carve out a huge chunk of time to play it. When we deemed it the best board game of 2019, we valued it against its original retail price; at 40% off this is a steal.

For more deals, take a look at our daily deals for today.