You got boost power!
Following a rather sizable update earlier this month, Nintendo’s Switch Online battle royale racer F-Zero 99 has now received another patch.
This bumps the game up to Version 1.5.1 and includes a bunch of fixes. There’s also a confirmation that certain things haven’t been recorded correctly for customers running on Version 1.4.1 or before.
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The competitive retro compilation Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is still getting plenty of support from Nintendo. As part of this it’s now updated the game to Version 1.1.1.
According to the official support page, this “fixes issues”. Here are the specifics:
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Riot Games has announced it will be laying off an unknown number of developers from the League of Legends PC development team, while simultaneously pledging to increase the size of the League of Legends team.
In a post to X/Twitter today, Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill shared “An Update on How We’re Evolving League” in which he announced the layoffs, explaining that this “isn’t about reducing headcount to save money.” Instead, the layoffs are apparently occurring so the company can make “sure we have the right expertise.”
“While team effectiveness is more important than team size, the League team will eventually be even larger than it is today as we develop the next phase of League,” Merrill continued. “For Rioters who are laid off, we’re supporting them with a severance package that includes a minimum of six months’ pay, annual bonus, job placement assistance, health coverage, and more.”
Merrill continued his explanation in a follow-up post, in which he said that the success of a development team is unrelated to its size. “If we’re solving the wrong problems, more resources won’t fix it. It’s about building smarter and healthier, not just bigger.”
While we’re on the subject of team size, I want to talk a little about both size and budget, and why they aren’t the right way to measure whether a team will be successful. We’ve definitely been memed in the past for talking about budgets, and rightly so. Success isn’t about…
— Tryndamere (@MarcMerrill) October 15, 2024
IGN has reached out to Riot Games for more clarity on why these layoffs are occurring, how many roles were impacted, and if any of those individuals are being considered for placement in roles as a part of the planned team expansion. A spokesperson confirmed that 27 employees were impacted across League of Legends development team and an additional five roles on Riot’s publishing team. The spokesperson stated that those impacted would have the ability to use the company’s internal job board to apply for other roles at Riot, but declined to share anything else.
These layoffs come rather uncomfortably as League of Legends celebrates its 15th anniversary, which Merrill references briefly in the post “so that League continues to be great for another 15 years and beyond.” They also come nine months after Riot already laid off 530 individuals, roughly 11% of its staff, in an effort to cut costs after allegedly taking on too many “big bets” as a company.
According to a games industry layoff tracker, this puts the number of laid off game developers this year alone at over 13,000, with over 10,000 laid off in 2023 and over 8,000 in 2022. We wrote about how the ongoing industry mass layoffs have impacted developers earlier this year.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Can Hyrule’s destiny really depend on such a lazy boy?
Editor’s note: We’ve now updated this review with our final thoughts and a score having spent some quality (sleepy) time with Alarmo.
Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo, one of Nintendo’s most perplexing yet delightful products in recent memory, was announced and launched simultaneously on Wednesday 9th October.
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The post Check Out Minecraft’s Once Upon a Dr. Seuss DLC appeared first on Xbox Wire.
We’ve seen the cost of SSDs trending upward for most of 2024, but lately it looks like prices have normalized and are even starting to drop back down. Today, Amazon is offering the PS5 compatible Lexar NM790 2TB PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SSD) with pre-installed heatsink for only $128.99. This was one of the best SSD deals we saw during Amazon Prime Day. It expired quickly after, but available once again for a little while longer.
The PlayStation 5 console comes with a 1TB SSD, but 300GB of that is reserved for the OS, leaving around 700GB left over for games. That space will run out quickly because some games take up an enormous amount of space, especially if you buy digital copies. For example, Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, and NBA 2K25 all require 140GB each. Even older games like God of War: Ragnarok, Gran Turismo 7, and Horizon Forbidden West require 90GB of space apiece.
Enter the Lexar NM790 SSD. Although we didn’t pick it as one of our favorite SSDs for the PlayStation 5, Lexar is a well known and established flash memory brand and its SSD has garnered plenty of positive reviews. The NM790 is a guaranteed fit with any PlayStation 5 console. Performance-wise, it boasts read speeds of 7,400MB/s and write speeds of 6,500MB/s, which is well above Sony’s minimum recommendation of 5,600MB/s. It’s also pre-equipped with a low-profile aluminum heatsink. The 2TB capacity triples the storage of a PS5 or doubles the storage of a PS5 Pro.
Amazon is offering Amazon Prime members this Silicon Power XS70 2TB PS5 SSD for $127.99 shipped. The primary difference is that the Lexar NM790 is a DRAM-less drive and the Silicon Power XS70 has a DRAM cache. Instead of onboard DRAM, the NM790 uses HMB (host memory buffer), which basically means that it uses the system memory as cache. The XS790, on the other hand, has a dedicated DRAM cache built into the stick. Theoretically, having a DRAM cache offers fast random write performance, but both types of SSDs are so fast that there really any noticeable performance difference when it comes to gaming on a PS5 or PC.
If you want more options, here’s a list of the best PS5 SSD deals available right now. If you’re looking for deals on other PS5 accessories, check out our constantly updated best PS5 deals article. If you don’t yet own a PS5 console, note that the new PS5 Pro is currently up for preorder and ships out next month. This is a more powerful version of the PS5 with double the storage capacity at a significantly higher price.
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn’t hunting for deals for other people at work, he’s hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 will soon get a brand new enemy type: the terrifying Tyranid Hierophant Bio-Titan.
Publisher Focus Entertainment said this huge xenos hits the explosive third-person melee shooter as part of the new PvE operation: Termination, which takes players back to the planet Kadaku. This will be made available for free, and is coming “very, very soon.”
Also part of this free update is the new Lethal difficulty, which is “designed to test your skills against the most brutal xenos and heretics.” The new weapon is the Neo-Volkite pistol, also free for all players.
As for cosmetics available through the premium season pass, the Dark Angels chapter of Space Marines is first in-line for new threads with a theme pack. This adds new weapon styles, armor pieces, and color schemes featuring the Unforgiven (the name given to the Dark Angels chapter following the disastrous events of the Horus Heresy in Warhammer 40,000 lore). This theme pack includes a full armor set for the Bulwark class.
All the above forms part of Season 2 of Space Marine 2, which runs from October until the end of 2024. Focus also teased the first year of updates coming to the game as part of Seasons 3 and 4. This includes new PvE operations, new PvP maps and modes, new Tyranid and Thousand Sons enemies, and a new Horde mode “with just one challenge: survive.” Expect cosmetics for new Space Marine chapters, too.
Specifically, Season 3 also adds PvE Prestige ranks and a Battle Barge expansion (the Battle Barge is the Ultramarines’ base of operations during the events of Space Marine 2). Season 4 adds the aforementioned Horde mode, a new enemy, and a new weapon. More seasons will follow.
Developer Saber Interactive recently released Space Marine 2’s game-changing patch 3.0, which made a seemingly innocuous change to the ending that got Warhammer 40,000 fans excited. Fans have also unearthed interesting and unannounced Space Marine 2 cosmetics by datamining the game.
Meanwhile, IGN interviewed Saber Chief Creative Officer Tim Willits about Space Marine 2’s record-breaking success. He revealed the boost he expects the PS5 Pro will give Space Marine 2, discussed how the breakout success of Space Marine 2 had “changed everything” for the studio, and how protective Games Workshop is over the Warhammer 40,000 brand.
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.
Blazin’ squad.
A totally original pixel art fighting game in 2024 is certainly a welcome surprise. What’s more of a surprise, though, is discovering that Mark Minkyu Chung touts himself as a solo game developer. Known by his developer handle Rarebreed, we hopped to Blazing Strike’s credits roll to corroborate the seemingly impossible. And, sure enough, he appears to have done pretty much everything himself, from programming to art direction, rollback netcode implementation, and sound. Where he’s had help, he’s still the lead credit of two individuals for things like animation, character, and environment design. To that end, it appears Blazing Strike’s vast majority is indeed the effort of one man – a head-spinning feat considering the comprehensive nature of the end product.
A love letter to the fighting game hardcore, there’s plenty of SNK about Blazing Strike, with incredibly tall, superbly rendered sprites, tons of animation frames, and a scaling effect that zooms in and out based on the proximity of the combatants. Indeed, the game’s graphical style is arguably its most polished asset, and bears some visual kinship to Rage of the Dragons. The spritework appears genuine, as if it was crafted on old-school tools, and boasts a near-CPS3 quality (that being the hardware that fuelled Street Fighter III and Red Earth). The colour palette positively beams, with attractive blending, and, although samey at times, the backgrounds are truly top-notch, featuring a range of sci-fi cityscapes and in-theme prison courtyards.
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The post Black Ops 6 Audio — A More Detailed, Dynamic Soundscape appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Wayfinders! I’m AJ, an Executive Producer at Airship Syndicate and I’m incredibly excited to talk about the upcoming release of our game, Wayfinder! Today we’re focusing on two big new additions coming alongside our October 21 launch!
For those that might not know, Wayfinder is an ARPG where players assume the roles of various Wayfinders to push back a hostile force called the Gloom. With a single player campaign that can be played solo or with up to two friends, as well as endless replayability through randomized dungeons and end game activities, Wayfinder is packed with content for you and your friends to enjoy; all for one price with no microtransactions.
Our 7 Wayfinders are distinct & different, each with their own backstory, gear, abilities and (pun intended) ways-to-find new experiences across the world. You start out with one hero and quickly rescue the full roster from the Gloom so you can level, customize, and swap between them at will. But you don’t need to fight alone! Two others can join you for 3-player online, drop-in cross play co-op as you fight through Evenor collecting over 3,000 weapons, armors, housing decorations and more!
We’ve been in Early Access for the past year, fine-tuning the game based on player feedback we’re seeing from our super engaged community. I want to give a huge thank you to Wayfinders old and new from all of us at Airship– you make the game better each update.
Leaving Early Access and moving into the game’s full release will bring a ton of new content to the game. A brand new playable character, new Lost Zones (our version of repeatable, and randomized dungeons), new armor styles and loot to collect and a whole lot more.
But today we’re here to talk about a huge brand new open world area– The Crucible! This lush, yet dangerous area has quests, mini bosses, and is packed with secrets (and monsters!) lurking around every corner.
The final battle begins in The Crucible. The Eldren have occupied a shattered region known as The Crucible—a city-sized machine built by The Architects, reclaimed by nature and lost to time. In search of a powerful secret at The Crucible’s center, the Eldren intend to finish the war their gods started, and pen the world a dark fate.
Players may have a mount already, but the Crucible is enormous and filled with verticality & multiple areas to explore. With that in mind, we developed an entirely new traversal tool: the Hookshot! We think you’ll love this thing. It’s super fun to use, and allows you to easily get around the massive new area, as well as avoid dangers in situations you may find yourself in when exploring the Crucible!
Alongside the game’s release, we’re also introducing The Critical Role Supporter Pack, which brings the world of Vox Machina into Wayfinder with over 50 unique items. This Supporter Pack directly supports Airship Syndicate and Critical Role, two indie companies bringing their worlds to life with the help of their passionate player base. This pack will go on sale October 21, but we’re thrilled to show off the first in-game teaser featuring Venomess as Vex! Can you spot all the Critical Role inspired items?
“We are huge fans of Critical Role, so we’re super excited for this collaboration, which we hope is the first of many.” said Joe Madureira, CEO of Airship Syndicate and Marvel Comics alum. “From the start, we wanted the Vox Machina personas to feel uniquely Wayfinder, while still capturing the magic that makes these beloved heroes of Exandria so special. Our team of artists and animators were very passionate about making it happen, and I think it shows.”
Wayfinder has changed for the better so much over the last year in Early Access! Our fans have told us that the experience today is more polished, more rewarding and most importantly, more fun. We can’t wait to welcome all the new PlayStation 5 Wayfinders on October 21!
