Xiaomi makes great phones, but they also produce a surprising amount of PC peripherals – including the subject of today’s deal, their Mi Desktop Monitor 27″. This poetically-named model has a 27-inch 1080p 75Hz IPS panel with 100% sRGB coverage, making it a reasonable choice for gaming and a great shout for content creation duties at its newly-reduced £110 price point.
To get this price, you’ll need to clip the £10 off new user coupon on the product page.
I don’t need to tell you that Microsoft’s Xbox Wireless Controller is one of the best PC gamepads, but what I should mention is that you can pick up one of these controllers in Shock Blue for £30.73 when you buy a “Used – Like New” model from Amazon Warehouse in the UK.
To get this deal, just visit the product page linked below, then click the button labelled “New & Used (45) from £37.99” to see other buying options. From here, find the model retailing for £38.41 and add it to your basket. Go to the checkout, and you’ll see that 20% has been knocked off the price, bringing the controller to a tidy £30.73.
Disney Games and Gameloft Barcelona have announced that Disney Speedstorm will officially race out of Early Access on September 28, 2023.
On September 28, Disney Speedstorm will be free-to-play on Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, and PC and will bring with it many of the lessons the dev team learned during the Early Access period which began on April 18, 2023.
“Since the launch of Early Access, we’ve received invaluable feedback and support from players, which have been instrumental in shaping Disney Speedstorm into the incredible racing experience it is today,” says Aska Suzuki, Game Manager. “Our incredible community’s enthusiasm, dedication, and love for the game have been our inspiration from day one, and we can’t wait to continue this journey together as we enter this exciting new phase.”
As of this writing, the only way to currently play Disney Speedstorm in Early Access is by purchasing one of the Founder’s Pack bundles, which all offer exclusive content, limited-time racing suits, kart liveries, in-game tokens and credits, racer unlocks, and more.
There are three bundles – Standard, Deluxe, and Ultimate – and they will be seeing “special discounts ranging from 20% to 30%” on all platforms.
In our Disney Speedstorm Early Access review, we said it “is a fundamentally good kart racer that’s currently too light on tracks and too repetitive to warrant the required investment. Worse still, it’s buried beneath a veritable Splash Mountain of gacha garbage and so many discrete currencies that do different things that it almost seems like a parody of the entire free-to-play genre. Nothing sucks like gacha, plucks your bucks like gacha, makes you jump through hoops for Donald Duck like gacha.”
We can only hope the Early Access period has given the team enough time to either make or plan some of these changes that will address some of these complaints and make it a more enjoyable experience for all. There is definitely promise and we said the racing itself is good!
Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
Zombie video game Dying Light 2 will meet zombie comic-book series The Walking Dead in an upcoming crossover event that will probably involve zombies.
2023 is finally the year where 2TB PS5 SSD upgrades are actually worth the price. Last year, prices for 1TB PS5 SSDs averaged around $150, whereas 2TB SSDs hovered closer to $300. This year, we’re seeing 1TB SSDs trickle below the $80 price point and 2TB SSDs are as low as $120. Note that you can’t use any old SSD and expect it to perform well on the PS5 console. You’ll want to pick up an PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 solid state drive with a rated 5,500MB/s read speed to match the PS5’s internal drive.
Note that Sony recommends a heatsink attached to your SSD. Not all SSDs listed here have pre-installed heatsinks. For the ones that do, we’ll be sure to mention it. For the ones that don’t, all you have to do is purchase your own heatsink (we recommend this one for $10) and install it yourself. It’s very easy.
For our recommended picks for PS5 SSDs, check out our Best PS5 SSDs of 2023.
You can’t ever go wrong with Crucial. The company has been making reliable and widely compatible flash memory for as long as I can remember. The Crucial P5 Plus boasts 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. Crucial even has an official YouTube PS5 SSD install guide to see you through the process.
The Samsung 990 Pro was released in November of 2022 and is the fastest PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD on the market. Samsung claims a 50% improved performance per watt over its Samsung 980 Pro predecessor. It boasts blazing sequential speeds of 7,450MB/s read and 6,900MB/s write and random speeds of 1400K/1550K IOPS. Unlike most other SSDs, the components are manufactured in-house. The 990 Pro utilizes the new Samsung Pascal controller and 7th gen TLC NAND flash chips.
Looking for a fast and inexpensive M.2 SSD from a brand that you recognize? Here’s your answer. Amazon is offering the Samsung 980 PRO 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe Gen 4 solid state drive for only $99.99. Compared to Western Digital and Seagate’s out-of-the-box PS5 ready SSDs, this is the least expensive. In terms of performance, it’s no longer the fastest SSD on the market (the 990 Pro is), but it’s still a very fast drive. It certainly more than meets the minimum 5600MB/s speed requirement to be used as a PS5 storage upgrade, with speeds of up to 7,100MB/s. It would also make an excellent boot drive for your gaming PC. Unless you run benchmarks for flex purposes, I think you’d be very hard pressed to notice an improvement with a faster SSD.
It’s happened, folks. A 2TB PS5-compatible SSD has broken past the $100 price barrier. The Adata Premium SSD boasts transfer speeds of up to 6,100MB/s, which is more than fast enough to surpass the PS5’s recommended minimum speed threshold of 5,500MB/s. 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 stock PS5 SSD. Better to save that money and put it to better use. It also includes a thin aluminum heatspreader… too thin to be appropriately called a heatsink, but still enough for the PS5 console.
Includes built-in heatsink!
The Silicon Power XS70 SSD, which include a robust aluminum heatsink costs just over $100. The aluminum heatsink is still slim enough to fit in the PS5 without obstruction. It boasts transfer speeds of up to 7300MB/s read and 6800MB/s write, comfortably faster than the 5500MB/s minimum recommended requirement. It actually performs a little better than the Crucial P5 Plus, the original WD Black SN850, and the Samsung 980 Pro, although that won’t make a difference in your PS5.
Corsair is a very well known brand for DIY PC builders. Corsair makes some of the best gaming products on the market, and that includes solid-state memory like RAM and SSDs. The MP600 Pro is Corsair’s fastest M.2 SSD and the “LPX” model is “optimized for PS5” because it includes a rugged preinstalled heatsink that is slim enough to fit in the PS5 bay without any issues. We like this RAM so much, we rated it the best PS5 SSD for 2023.
Today the Western Digital Store beats out all of its middlemen for the best price on the PS5-compatible WD Black SN850X SSD. The WD Black SN850X is generally considered one of the top three fastest SSDs out there right now, and its also the most popular choice of a PS5 SSD (it’s the only brand officially licensed for the PS5 console). It has newer flash chips (BiCS5 vs BiCS4) and an updated firmware which offer improved sequential and random read/write speeds over the previous generation SN850 (non-X). The version that comes with a heatsink is the one you’d want for your PS5. It’s beefy, but still slim enough to fit.
There’s an interesting story behind this drive. Nextorage was actually originally created by Sony as an SSD division catered to the PS5 console. For whatever reason, Sony decided to ditch that idea and sold this business to another stakeholder in the company, Phison (they make memory controllers found in SSDs from Seagate, Corsair, and Sabrent, and more). Phison eventually accomplished the goal of releasing an SSD catered specifically for the PS5 console in the form of this product right here.
There may be other SSD deals out there, but these are the PS5 SSDs we’ve tried ourselves and highly recommend. They also double up as outstanding boot drives for your gaming PC, in case you don’t need additional storage for your PS5 console.
It’s extremely easy! Removing the case cover is completely toolless. In fact, the only screw you have to remove is the one that keeps the cover for the SSD bay in place. You don’t even put it back when you’re done. Sony has a quick and easy YouTube video guide.
Sony recommends you install an SSD that has an attached heatsink. If the SSD you purchase doesn’t include one, it’s simple enough to buy one for about $10 on Amazon and add it yourself. Most of these heatsinks are just attached using an adhesive like thermal tape.
Hello? Hello? Is anyone out there? If you’re reading this, you must be. If not, hell, I must try to keep on living even if no one’s observing. I’ve not seen my friend’s cat in three days. I don’t know if my friend has a cat anymore. I don’t know if I have a friend anymore. All I know is that Twitter’s collapse has accelerated. But this was once a weekly column highlighting attractive and interesting indie games from Twitter’s #screenshotsaturday tag, and maybe it still is, or maybe it will be again. For now, come check out these games, if you can.
Whether it’s the emergence of the battle royale genre or breakout multiplayer survival games, PC gaming often serves as the frontier for the latest trends and innovations in the gaming landscape, often leading to massive concentrations of players.
But of all the PC games ever to appear on the Steam charts, few have enjoyed the exceptional popularity of those atop Steam’s most played charts. Based on the maximum number of concurrent players ever held by any game on Valve’s platform, here are the 15 most played Steam games of all time.
Concurrent Player Record: 472,962
As the long-awaited sequel from the studio that had most recently released The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the anticipation for Fallout 4 was undeniable around the time of launch. So much so, in fact, that in the days after its debut, it soared to the top of Steam’s player charts and set a record that still ekes out a spot on the top 15 of all time to this very day.
With an infinite number of settlements needing the help of players, it’s no wonder why this game’s player count has stood the test of time.
Concurrent Player Record: 472,791
Hilariously, Capcom Arcade Stadium shot to the top of the Steam charts and was the third most played game at one point (above even Apex Legends and PUBG) long after its initial release. Why? The answer, according to Pavel Djundik who is an expert on Steam’s metrics, is that bots flooded to the game and idled within it in order to farm Steam Trading Cards.
Steam Trading Cards are digital collectibles on Valve’s platform that can be traded for monetary value, and making a bot pretend to play a game is apparently one way that one might acquire cards to be sold. The fact that Capcom Arcade Stadium can be downloaded for free makes it a prime target for those kinds of shenanigans.
Maybe we shouldn’t count this one, since it was erroneously boosted by the presence of fake players, but the story’s kinda too good to skip over. We’re counting it – you’re welcome, Capcom.
Concurrent Player Record: 489,886
As one of the best-selling games of all time (nearly 45 million copies sold by some counts), it’s unsurprising to see Terraria make the list of most played Steam games. The pixelated survival and building RPG, which is sometimes compared to the likes of Minecraft, is wonderfully hard to put down and perfect to play with friends, plus is affordable enough to give a pretty low barrier of entry for those who are curious to give it a try. With nearly 500,000 concurrent players at its peak, it’s clear that many of those buyers were hooked.
Concurrent Player Record: 491,670
Call of Duty games have always been more popular on consoles than Steam (who seem to favor the likes of Counter-Strike), but with the advent of the battle royale genre, which has enjoyed enormous popularity on the PC platform, Warzone easily makes the cut. As last-man-standing games entered a new level of maturity and saw AAA iterations enter the fray, Warzone has become a staple at the top of Steam’s player charts, alongside the likes of other battle royale peers like Apex Legends.
Interestingly, Warzone is the only Call of Duty game to appear on this list, despite the series enjoying massive success and popularity with each annual release.
Concurrent Player Record: 502,387
Survival games have a habit of doing exceedingly well on Steam, and one of the more recent examples to soar on the Steam charts is Valheim: the challenging, Norse-inspired game from Iron Gate. With overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam and a ton of hype in the weeks and months after its initial launch, it was a common occurrence to see nearly all of one’s Steam friends logged on during the height of its popularity.
Concurrent Player Record: 624,473
Apex Legends remains one of the most popular battle royale games to this day, so it’s no wonder it can be found in the top ten most played Steam games of all time. Obviously it’s an incredibly polished shooter from the studio that created the likes of Titanfall 2, but it’s also important to remember that it is and always has been a free-to-play game as well, which makes it incredibly accessible for anyone looking to hop in. Even now, Apex Legends retains hundreds of thousands of daily players, so it’s likely to remain within the top ten for some time.
Concurrent Player Record: 702,845
Surprisingly, there is only one social deduction game to make it on this list, and it’s not Among Us. Instead, it’s Gaggle Studios’ Goose Goose Duck, where you and your fellow geese try to identify duck infiltrators in your ranks before they take you down.
The reason for the game’s rise in popularity? The sheer star power of one of its early players. After K-pop star Kim Taehyung, better known as V of BTS fame, streamed himself playing the game, it absolutely exploded on Steam, overwhelming the indie developer’s servers in no time at all. Even today its player base remains substantial with tens of thousands logging in every day, but one has to consider if it ever would have reached such lofty heights without a little push from BTS.
Concurrent Player Record: 879,308
As one of the most popular fictional worlds ever created, one might expect to see a game taking place in the world of witchcraft and wizardry to make the list – and one would be right. Hailed as the first truly good Harry Potter game, Hogwarts Legacy broke sales records and concurrent player records in the days after its Steam debut.
Hogwarts Legacy is also the most recent game on this list, having been released earlier this year only a few short months ago. It’s also noteworthy that Hogwarts Legacy is one of only three games on this list that does not feature multiplayer in any form, making its accomplishment all the more impressive.
Concurrent Player Record: 953,426
The first of two MMORPGs to make the list, New World was the first major hit from Amazon Games, the online shopping network’s play at breaking into the games industry. The MMO put players in the boots of an explorer in the mid-seventeenth century sent to colonize a fictional new continent, and had players grinding for raw materials and crafting to settle the untamed land.
A strong initial launch saw its astronomical rise to the top of the Steam charts that saw a dramatic 90% decline just a few short months later, though it still enjoys a fairly large following to this day.
Concurrent Player Record: 953,426
A FromSoftware game directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki with worldbuilding from George R. R. Martin is just about the most search engine optimized thing I can imagine, so it’s only expected that the latest soulslike masterpiece from the creator of the genre would dominate the lives of gamers everywhere for as long as it did.
With nearly one million concurrent players at one point, Elden Ring would go on to win IGN’s Game of the Year award for 2022, alongside numerous other accolades.
Concurrent Player Record: 1,054,388
Despite a troubled launch on consoles, CD Projekt RED’s singleplayer science fiction RPG, Cyberpunk 2077, was incredibly popular on the PC platform, with over 1 million players online at the same time at its peak. As the follow-up project from the studio who developed the legendary Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the hype behind Cyberpunk certainly helped propel it to the top of the Steam charts. To this day, it remains the most played Steam game that does not have multiplayer features of any kind.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, the upcoming DLC for the game is set to arrive in September 2023.
Concurrent Player Record: 1,295,114
The only multiplayer online battle arena, or MOBA, to appear on Steam’s top 15 most played games is one of the greatest of the genre: Dota 2. Created by none other than Valve, Dota 2 has stood the test of time, regularly hosting over half a million players every day. At its all-time peak, it held well over 1.25 million players, earning it the coveted fourth position on Steam’s most played charts.
Concurrent Player Record: 1,325,305
The third most played Steam game in history is also the most played MMORPG to make the list. Lost Ark, an action role-playing game that found success in South Korea during its regional debut from developer Smilegate, was later released internationally to become one of the most popular MMOs on the market.
While its daily player counts have waned since its heyday, at its peak it held the interest of well over one million players at the same time – that’s a whole lot of giant dragons and oversized swords!
Concurrent Player Record: 1,818,773
In Steam history, few games have had an impact on the platform like Counter-Strike. Indeed, Steam may not be the industry-leading platform it is today without the ongoing success of the series which still, to this very day, reaches over one million concurrent players on an almost daily basis. At its peak, Global Offensive, the latest in the series, held almost 2 million players simultaneously, which is miraculously not very many more concurrent players than it hosts on a regular basis. It’s hard to imagine how big a splash the recently announced Counter-Strike 2 will make when it eventually becomes available.
Concurrent Player Record: 3,257,248
Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, better known as PUBG, was the progenitor for the world’s most popular genre of late: battle royales. Though numerous iterations have spawned since and found incredible success (a couple of which even appear on this list), the attention garnered by the original genuine article is unlikely to be bested anytime soon.
With over 3 and a quarter million concurrent players, PUBG nearly doubles the next most played Steam game and far outpaces many of the other juggernauts on this list and is hands-down the most played Steam game of all time, by a mile.
Travis Northup is a writer for IGN based in San Francisco. He’s been writing about games for over a decade and enjoys everything from strategy games and platformers to shooters and open-world RPGs.
Game Pass is losing the beloved Spelunky 2 alongside two other games soon.
The Xbox and PC Game Pass Leaving Soon pages were updated to include the fan-favourite cave exploration game alongside Exo One and Paw Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls.
All three games are set to leave Game Pass July 15, though it’s worth pointing out Xbox offers 20% off to those looking to buy a Game Pass title outright. Those looking to continue spelunking could therefore do so to lessen the sting a little.
In what could be a one-two punch for some users, Microsoft also announced a price rise for its subscription service recently. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will cost $16.99 (a $2 increase) as of July 6 and a regular Xbox Game Pass subscription will cost $10.99 monthly (a $1 increase).
Several games are joining the service around the same time as Spelunky 2’s departure, of course, including Need for Speed Unbound, Stor of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, and more.
In our 10/10 review of the game, IGN said: “Spelunky 2 is a masterpiece of procedurally generated platforming that stays true to the legendarily challenging original while also holding surprises around every corner.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Horace the Horse is no prized pony.
Many of us will have seen the meme format that goes “If I had a nickel for every time , I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?”. It’s a phrase that we could apply to a wide range of gaming scenarios, but having played Everybody 1-2-Switch!, the successor to 2017’s 1-2-Switch, we couldn’t help but be reminded of it.
Essentially, “if we had a nickel for every time Nintendo followed up a series-defining Zelda title with a mediocre party game, we’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice”.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
When you spend so much time playing video games, it can be sometimes hard not to occasionally muse, “What if there were a game that…?” Dot dot dot. There’s a wealth of potential in those three dots, and today’s the day to plumb those depths and extract the beautiful nuggets of impossibility within. So, readers, what’s your best game idea that will likely never be made?
