A new console generation is upon us. If you don't play video games (or even if you do), navigating the tech and gaming landscapes can feel intimidating, even without the additional questions and confusion prompted by new PlayStation and Xbox systems hitting the market soon. If you're a prospective buyer, like a parent doing some early holiday shopping, and find yourself in this camp--confused by all the different brands, naming conventions, accessories, and technical details--don't worry! In this guide, we'll walk you through what's currently on the market, break down the key differences between the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S, and try to ease some of that gift-buying pressure.Explaining Next Gen: The PS5 and Xbox Series XBecause of innovations in hardware and other trends and advancements in the game industry, new game consoles often launch around the same time. These periods are referred to as a "console generation." The current generation of consoles includes Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One, which were both released in 2013, and the Nintendo Switch, which was released in 2017. When people refer to "next gen," they are talking about the upcoming generation of new consoles.In this case, the next generation of consoles includes the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X, which will launch in November 2020. For a clearer look at some recent console generations from the past few decades, check out the table below.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Though most of the hype this holiday season surrounds a pair of next-generation consoles, Nintendo has had a huge year as well, largely due to the massive launch of Animal Crossing: New Horizons during a global pandemic, which left many people scrambling to buy the console and grab a copy for themselves. Though the mad rush to buy a Switch has calmed down a bit in recent months, the console is still hard to find in stock at MSRP. Thankfully, restocks at major retailers are becoming more common than they were earlier this year. That's fortunate, since we expect the Switch will still be at the top of many people's wish lists this Christmas.Whether you're shopping for someone who wants their first Switch or someone who's owned one since 2017, there are plenty of Nintendo gift ideas out there that'll make this holiday season truly special. From this year's biggest Switch games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Paper Mario: The Origami King to handy Switch accessories and eye-catching merch, there's no shortage of options out there that would make any Nintendo fan's face light up with joy. So to make your gift shopping a little easier this year, we've rounded up some of the best Nintendo gift ideas for 2020.Plus, see our full Nintendo Switch buying guide for more info on the console if needed and our guides to the best Switch controllers, carrying cases, grips, and screen protectors for more Switch gift ideas.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Legends are slippery things. One tells of Arthur, the once and future King of Britain who united the realm against the Saxon invaders. Where historical fact is elusive, literary fancy has imagined Arthur's idyllic court of Camelot, its chambers populated with knights, wizards, and witches, its halls reverberating with chivalry, romance, and betrayal. In exploring the legend of Arthur, Pendragon mixes interactive fiction and tactical combat within a short-form roguelike structure to tell myriad tales. As a study of how myths are formed from countless half-truths, it's effective. But as a narrative journey, it feels slight, its more admirable efforts undermined by repetition and an uneasy relationship with combat.In this particular rendition of Arthurian legend, the story always begins in 673 A.D., about a week before Arthur reaches the castle of Camlann to face his son, Mordred, whose challenge for the throne has ignited a civil war. Each time you roll a new game, you'll play as one of Arthur's court--his estranged wife Guinevere, her possible lover Sir Lancelot, the enigmatic Merlin, to name three of the more familiar characters--dashing across Britain to aid the king in the climactic showdown. En route, you will run into characters that you can convince to ride with your banner, others you'll need to put to the sword, and an alarming number of wolves, snakes, giant spiders, and rats to fight or flee from. Though rest and rations will help the wounded recover, all members of your party--even your starting character--can die permanently, and the journey is over if everyone falls in battle. A complete run will typically take only 20-30 minutes, depending on how quickly you find Camlann.The rapid turnaround of a run serves to highlight the dynamic nature of Pendragon's storytelling. By embarking on a new journey, you'll quickly find yourself exploring a reconfigured map, discovering new locations and story events, and accumulating alternate perspectives on the core myths of the land. And the game does a remarkable job tying together the many disparate narrative threads you can follow throughout one run. In one run, I began as Morgana Le Fay before meeting and recruiting Guinevere. Morgana was later wounded in battle while Guinevere fled, leaving me to play on as the latter. By the time I reached Camlann, Guinevere too had perished and so I ended up facing Mordred's knights with just Arthur's brother, Sir Kay, and a strong-armed peasant blacksmith in tow. What's impressive is that the dialogue doesn't miss a beat; conversations feel coherent and reactive to whatever choice and chaos has occurred along the way.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The anthology series Creepshow is one of the big successes for the horror streaming service Shudder, and Season 2 is now in production. But while fans will have to wait until 2021 for the next batch of spooky stories, the service has announced that a new animated Creepshow special will be released next month.The animated Halloween Creepshow special will feature two new stories, both written by Stephen King, who wrote the original Creepshow movie in 1982, and his son Joe Hill. The first is titled Survivor Type and features 24 star Kiefer Sutherland as a man trying to stay alive on a deserted island, while the second, Twittering from the Circus of the Dead, stars Joey King (The Kissing Booth) as a teenager on a scary family roadtrip.The special hits Shudder on October 26, and it is directed by Creepshow showrunner Greg Nicotero. In a press release, Nicotero said, "Halloween wouldn't be complete without Creepshow, so with the help of the father and son team of Stephen and Joe, as well as a fantastic animated format, we get to continue the tradition and spirit of Halloween."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Epic has found some allies in its fight against Apple and Google. The company has joined with Spotify, Basecamp, and a handful of other companies to launch the Coalition for App Fairness. The nonprofit says it was formed to "advocate for freedom of choice and fair competition across the app ecosystem."For the time being the coalition's primary focus is laying out its vision, consisting of ten guidelines for ethical platforms. The first is pointedly similar to Epic's own complaints against Apple, stating: "No developer should be required to use an app store exclusively, or to use ancillary services of the app store owner, including payment systems, or to accept other supplementary obligations in order to have access to the app store."Other parts of the vision statement cover topics like not blocking apps based on business model concerns, not using a developer's own data against the developer, the ability for app developers to interface directly with customers, and policy transparency, among many others.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Developer Team Ninja has announced that Nioh 2's second expansion, Darkness in the Capital, launches on October 15 for PlayStation 4. It'll be available in the game's $20 season pass or as a standalone purchase.Darkness in the Capital features new storylines, bosses, Yokai, Guardian Spirits, skills, Ninjutsu, Onmyo Magic, and Soul Cores. In addition to these new inclusions, the second DLC expansion will also feature new armor sets and a weapon the studio said "fans of hand-to-hand combat will surely relish." This weapon hasn't been specified.Creative director Tom Lee briefly outlined the story players can expect to experience when Darkness in the Capital drops next month. Players will be once again whisked to the middle of the Heian Period (794-1185), where they will discover an ancient Kyoto City overrun by Yokai. To quell the ancient threat, players will team up with "the most preeminent demon slayer and the strongest sorcerer in history."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Earlier this week Microsoft announced the purchase of Bethesda, bringing all the publishers' studios under the Xbox Game Studios brand. This isn't the first time Bethesda and Microsoft have had a tight working relationship, however, with a history spanning back to the original Xbox.During a recent podcast with Microsoft's Phil Spencer and Larry Nelson, as well as Bethesda's Pete Hines and Todd Howard, the group recalled some of the history between Xbox and Bethesda's titles. Howard, longtime designer on series such as The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, mentioned how The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was a marvel to get running on the original Xbox. Turns out it featured some ridiculous tricks to do so too."If you're running low on memory, you can reboot the original Xbox and the user can't even tell," Howard explained. "You can throw a screen up though. When Morrowind loads sometimes you get a very long load, that's us rebooting the Xbox."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Amazon has unveiled its cloud gaming platform, Luna. In announcing its dive into cloud gaming, Amazon also partnered with publisher Ubisoft to create a gaming channel specific to the Luna platform.Though nameless for now, the gaming channel will be Ubisoft-specific and gives Luna subscribers access to the publisher's titles the same day they release. This includes games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Far Cry 6, and Immortals: Fenyx Rising. These will run in up to 4K resolution and comes with mobile gameplay, possibly meaning you can take it on the go so long as you're connected to your Amazon account. Since the channel is a subscription, per Amazon's wording, it's likely to cost something. What that cost is, though, remains to be seen as neither Amazon nor Ubisoft has specified this yet. The channel also isn't the only one in development for Luna."This is the first of multiple Luna game channels in development, where customers can play games from their favorite publishers and genres," Amazon said in describing the Ubisoft gaming channel. The company hasn't unveiled any other gaming publishers it is partnering with yet.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Just in time for the holiday season, Amazon has revealed its next generation of smart home devices. The lineup of products includes new versions of the Echo and Echo Dot, Echo Show, Fire TV Stick, and more. Amazon also unveiled a cloud game streaming service dubbed Luna, which will be available for $6 per month. We've rounded up the highlights from Amazon's fall event below.Amazon's new lineup of devices are arriving at an exciting time for Amazon. Though not confirmed by Amazon, multiple sites have reported that the annual Prime Day sale will kick off on October 13. It's likely that we'll see some discounts on some of these brand-new Amazon devices during the sale.LunaLuna controllerAmazon is entering the cloud game streaming market with Luna, a new service that is powered by Amazon's AWS servers to provide low latency game streaming. Luna will feature more than 100 games in early access, including Control, A Plague Tale: Innocence, and Resident Evil 7. Amazon has partnered with Ubisoft to bring more than 50 Ubisoft titles to Luna as well. Upcoming AAA games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Far Cry 6, and Immortals Fenyx Rising will be available to play on Luna on launch day.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Amazon has unveiled its own cloud gaming service called Luna, which will use Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its backbone. CNET reports the service is touting the ability to play anywhere, including iPhone and iPad. You can request early access to the service starting today.Amazon Luna PlatformsAmazon says that at launch, Luna will be playable on PC, Mac, Amazon's own Fire TV devices, as well as iPhone and iPad through web apps. An Android version is said to be coming soon as well.This is a notable difference between Luna and the cloud gaming services from Microsoft and Google--xCloud and Stadia, respectively--which have run into Apple policies that have prevented the ability to play on iOS devices. Apple recently changed its rules, but Microsoft issued a statement maintaining that it's still a bad experience for gamers.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Fortnite's Week 5 challenges are here and players will recognize one familiar task. They will need to collect floating rings at Coral Castle. This guide will give you the exact location of all four rings so you can collect them and complete the challenge with ease. We put together a handy map that'll guide you to each ring quickly.Where Are The Coral Castle Floating Rings Located?Fortnite Coral Castle Floating Ring LocationsCoral Castle is a named location, so it shouldn't be difficult to find. It's located in the upper right corner of the map in the B2 grid tile. The first ring is located on the lower half of the Coral Castle location. It's sitting on top of a small building that's isolated from the rest of the structures in the area. You'll need to build ramps to get to it.Fortnite Coral Castle Floating Ring 1The other three rings are located in the center of the location; all in the same vicinity. There is one on top of one of the biggest castles, shown in the image below. The other two will be visible from this location. They can be seen on the neighboring ruin rooftops.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is approaching its sixth season of content, with an earlier teaser trailer revealing its September 29 release date. Along with returning characters, Season 6 is bringing with it firefights underground which will take place in a new subway system underneath Warzone's map.Verdansk is being updated with an entire subway network that will let you zip around its large land mass when Season 6 arrives. The map shared shows a few stops that the train will make as it circles around the map, letting you hop aboard for a quick ride. Of course, it's unlikely that you'll be the only player thinking about this, giving you another space to both hunt and avoid foes in.Some disclaimers on the image make it sound like the subway system will be a way to circumvent the deadly gas above ground that will kill you if you find yourself outside of the encroaching circle. The train will also not stop at stations that are engulfed in gas, which narrows down your ability to escape if you've already been caught out above.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Among Us has quickly become one of the most popular games of 2020 for its silly party game antics, but also because it's relatively accessible across a handful of platforms-- it's even free to play on a few. Its crossplay functionality means that even if you're playing on one platform, you can still connect to a game with friends, family, or strangers playing on a different one, opening the game up even further. Here's how Among Us crossplay works and which platforms it's compatible with across PC and mobile.Among Us Crossplay PlatformsAmong Us supports crossplay in local and online multiplayer for the following platforms:PC (Steam and itch.io)iOS (App Store)Android (Google Play)That means players on PC or mobile, both iOS and Android, can play in the same game together. It also doesn't matter which platform the host is on.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

EA has revealed how in-game progression and rewards, competitive rankings, and challenges will work in Star Wars: Squadrons. In a blog post, EA reaffirmed that Squadrons "is a self-contained game, where all progression, unlocks and rewards are earned solely through play."In Squadrons, there are a few ways to progress through the game. You can either go for the game's in-game currencies--Requisition and Glory--or rise through the ranks in Operations.By just playing in matches, you'll unlock experience that causes you to level up. With each level you'll earn Requisition, which you can spend to unlock ship components. These components allow you to customize your eight starfighters, tweaking each ship's performance to your ideal standard.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The world was stunned to learn that Chadwick Boseman had passed away in late August. The actor passed away after a four-year battle with colon cancer. Throughout his battle, Boseman still found the time to visit children with cancer, which he kept private. Now, there is an art piece honoring the late actor and Black Pnather star at Downtown Disney.Artist Nikkolas Smith revealed the piece on Instagram. "To millions of kids, T'Challa was a legend larger than life, and there was no one more worthy to fill those shoes than Chadwick Boseman," Smith wrote. "I'm so thankful to be able to honor Chadwick's life and purpose in this way." View this post on InstagramThis one is special. My King Chad tribute is now on a wall on display at Downtown Disney. 🐾 It is a full circle moment for me: my final two projects as a Disney Imagineer last summer were working on the Children’s Hospital project and the Avengers Campus. To millions of kids, T'Challa was a legend larger than life, and there was no one more worthy to fill those shoes than Chadwick Boseman. I'm so thankful to be able to honor Chadwick's life and purpose in this way. I am grateful to the Disney family for being so supportive of my journey as an artist. @waltdisneyimagineering @disney @marvelstudios @disneyland 🐾✨ #LongLiveTheKing #KingChad #WakandaForever #Phambili #DowntownDisney #BlackPanther #ChadwickBoseman #RIPChadwick #WDIA post shared by Nikkolas Smith (@nikkolas_smith) on Sep 24, 2020 at 10:01am PDTSmith stands in front of the piece which features Boseman and a child in a hospital gown in the "Wakanda Forever" pose, a beautifully fitting piece to honor the actor that made so many people happy and have them so much hope for his role of T'Challa in Marvel's Black Panther.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com