After collaborating on a pair of Crocs back in 2023, SEGA is continuing its streak of ‘Footwear That Would Be Inappropriate For Sonic The Hedgehog’ with a new pair of Sonic-inspired Timberland kicks.
Let’s manage those expectations right from the jump. It’s unlikely that most of us will ever get our hands on a pair of these bad boys. The collab is in celebration of the upcoming grand opening of SEGA’s flagship store in Japan, and will only be available at the nearby Shibuya PARCO Timberland store from 9th August.
Tim Sweeney, boss of Epic Games, has denied claims published by The Wall Street Journal of frustration within the company regarding its working relationship with Disney.
Yesterday, a WSJ report offered fresh detail on Fortnite’s mysterious upcoming Disney mode, developed following the latter’s $1.5bn investment in Epic Games. The offering won’t launch until “fall 2026 at the earliest,” the report stated, with some Epic executives complaining about “the slow pace of the decision-making at Disney, with signoffs needed from so many different divisions.”
It’s this claim that Sweeney has now refuted, via a post on social media that brands the suggestion as “BS.”
“The anonymous quote is BS,” Sweeney wrote. “The speed of Disney and Epic collaborations like Darth Vader has been awesome and is around 10x the ordinary speed of media company dealings in this business. We even provided a statement to the writer of this article saying so, but they chose not to print it.”
Epic Games’ big Disney collaboration was announced in February 2024, though details on it have remained largely under-wraps. Initial concept artwork for the project featured a virtual Disneyland-style environment, with hubs themed around Disney’s main brands. Exactly what players will do in it, however, remains to be seen.
WSJ’s report states that the project is being overseen within Disney by Josh D’Amaro, head of Disney parks and resorts, who has visited Sweeney and spent time hiking with the CEO. One alleged concern around the project has been its fan-created elements, with questions raised over who might legally own a dance that utilises Disney characters.
Epic Games and Disney have forged a deep collaboration in recent years, with Marvel and Star Wars themed seasons, and countless characters now available as Fortnite skins, now including a selection from Pixar films, and even Disney classic animation, too.
The companies recently used Fortnite to test an AI-powered Darth Vader, who could chat away with players using generative speech. Upon launch, the concept required an urgent fix after fans quickly got Darth Vader saying things he shouldn’t, though ultimately more than 10 million players spoke with the Sith Lord.
This week sees Fortnite shift into its next season, which sees its main battle royale Island infested with mutant bugs, and additional characters from Halo brought in to help. Meanwhile, in the game’s OG mode, the action moves into Fortnite’s well-loved Season 5, which should see the appearance of Kevin the Cube — though Epic Games is doing fun things with this re-run’s storyline, so perhaps not.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Battlefield 6‘s open beta kicks off later this week, and EA have now painted a picture of what you can expect maps/modes-wise, as well as in terms of the changes the devs have made based on Battlefield Labs playtest feedback.
Plus, there’s a new trailer that features yet more folks in camo running about amid booms. I’m glad to report that no helicopters, at least at a glance, look to have been harmed in the run up to this one.
Imagine Tetris but played in a bottomless ocean shaft, with linked tetronimoes serving to continue your journey down that shaft, providing you keep earning enough points to play them. This is Podvodsk, a free game jam experiment from Loop Hero developers Four Quarters.
Not played Tetris? 1) you bloody liar, and 2) let me frame this differently, then. The idea here is that you’re trying to construct a tapering underwater city out of random clumps of building blocks, dangled from the bottom of a miraculously unsinkable surface platform. Each building both costs points and also, earns points based on different scoring criteria, and every time you play a piece, the screen scrolls irreversibly downward.
With cards that range from supernovas to spaceships, it’s peculiar that much of the community is most intrigued by a new lobster that can eat through artifacts to heal you and deal damage to rivals.
Let’s meet our new crustacean overlord, thanks to data from TCGPlayer.
Climbers: I’ll Have the Lobster
Kicking our climbers off with our Boros boss, Ragost, Deft Gastronaut is going for a couple of bucks in the showcase treatment.
He’s nowhere near the most valuable cards in Edge of Eternities, and dovetails nicely with Jumpstart’s Tempting Witch, a card that creates food tokens and also triggers damage. It’s ‘jumped’, but only to 13 cents, and might be worth a look for a Mardu deck.
As we noted recently, The Gaffer is a popular card, and we’re including it again as it’s hit new heights of over $12. For context, it was under $4 just a few weeks ago.
For additional synergies, why not chuck in the Nuka-Cola Vending Machine? It’s hardly a cheap card at around $18 for the non-foil, but it gives you more food tokens and turns them into Treasure tokens for ramp. You could build quite a powerful engine from these cards.
Finally, Academy Manufactor is an obvious pick for synergies here, since it gives you three (different) tokens for the price of one. It’s up to $6.
Bonus: The Most Valuable EoE Cards This Week
Edge of Eternities is packed with cool cards, and since it just launched last week, I thought I’d take a moment during this week’s article to look at the priciest cards in the set so you can keep an eye out when you’re cracking packs (or any you want to eye up as standalone purchases, saucy).
Some of other the highest-value cards in the set include Icetill Explorer (Showcase – Fracture Foil) at $382.16, followed by Exalted Sunborn at $320, and Starfield Vocalist at $287.55, both in the same Showcase – Fracture Foil treatment.
Anticausal Vestige is priced at $198.68, just ahead of The Endstone at $198.40 and an alternate version of Sothera, the Supervoid at $197.99, all in the Showcase – Fracture Foil style.
Devastating Onslaught comes in at $159.85, while The Dominion Bracelet is listed at $121.82. Rounding out the group is Uthros, Titanic Godcore (Borderless – Galaxy Foil), which currently sits at $92.52.
It’s worth noting that these prices are taken around launch weekend, so they’ll fluctuate considerably as more product floods the market. We’ll be keeping an eye on things in the weeks to come, but expect big swings either way.
Crashers: Songs and Spellcraft
If you’ve got a landfall deck, The Wandering Minstrel from the Final Fantasy set is under a dollar and means your tap-lands come in nice and untapped. It’s not a big drop, but it’s an easy recommendation because that utility is super helpful at a nice low cost in Simic colors.
If you want to get some Legendary Creatures on the board quickly, Serah Farron can help. This Final Fantasy card lowers the cost of Legendary Creatures, then transforms into an artifact that powers them up, all for under $1.
Baloth Woodcrasher could be a lot of fun in an upgraded version of the World Shaper Commander deck, getting extra power and trample with land drops. Considering how many lands are included, plus Szarel, Genesis Shepherd’s ability to play them from your graveyard, you can keep hitting opponents for big numbers each turn for 8 cents.
If you don’t mind mixing up your Final Fantasy titles, Noctis, Prince of Lucis could be a really neat addition to the Scions and Spellcraft Commander precon. He can pay life to get artifact spells from the graveyard, while Y’Shtola, Night’s Blessed can help you get some of that life back.
From spaceships to planets, this new sci-fi universe is a stark departure even in a year that’s included Aetherdrift, Tarkir, and Final Fantasy, and early impressions seem to be positive.
To clarify, these are the best-selling Edge of Eternities cards so far, thanks to data from TCGPlayer, and it’s changed a fair amount from our initial coverage during pre-release.
Here are the best-selling Magic: The Gathering cards of Edge of Eternities so far.
Where to Buy MTG Edge of Eternities Sealed Boosters
Play Boosters are now the standard way to crack open Magic packs, having replaced both Set and Draft Boosters. But if you’re on the hunt for rare cards, Collector Boosters are the best option.
These packs are more expensive, but are much more likely to include various foil treatments, extended arts, and all sorts. There are usually 5 Commons, 4 Uncommons, 5 Rare or Mythic Rare cards, a Land and a Token, but the rub here is that 6 of the included cards have a ‘booster Fun frame’ and 12-13 of them are foil.
Surprisingly, stock is already running low on Amazon for most Edge of Eternities boosters. That said, sites like TCGPlayer still have a solid supply, and in some cases, better prices too.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
A group of QA workers at Call Of Duty studio Raven Software have officially signed off on their first union contract with parent company Microsoft and COD publisher Activision-Blizzard, in the run-up to the launch of Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7. The contract is the result of years of negotiations, and offers some protection against the treatment of QA workers as disposable staff – hired to quash bugs shortly before release and laid off soon afterwards, with minimal odds of personal development or progression to other roles.
It’s time once again for Nintendo of America’s Play Together sale!
From today until August 17th at 11:59 pm PT the Play Together sale slashes the price of multiple multiplayer games so you and your friends and family can get together and sit down for some excellent couch co-op for a fraction of the price.
It’d be fair to say 8BitDo knows a fair bit about peripherals, but this one still caught us by surprise. The 8BitDo Retro 87 Xbox Edition is a mechanical gaming keyboard inspired by Microsoft’s original, monolithic black box.
