Overwatch's 32nd playable hero is Echo, a flying artificially intelligent robot with the ability to mimic other heroes and borrow their abilities. Echo has popped up in Overwatch's fiction a few times over the last two years, and it was with her appearance in the McCree- and Ashe-focused story video "Reunion" that the team really started developing the character for inclusion to the game. But Echo's origins stretch back much further than that cinematic from 2018."Typically, heroes in our game can come from a bunch of different angles," Overwatch lead designer Geoff Goodman explained to GameSpot. "So often they come from design by prototype--like, we really need a sniper or something, we should try to get a sniper there, and build a character around the gameplay. In other common cases, we'll have somebody whose story just gets created for background, or an artist has a cool idea, and they just draw something. We don't have a gameplay part yet. So we have all these cool characters hanging out. And in Echo's case, it was more that we had the art for her for a long time ago. Technically, the real origins of her as a character goes back to Titan, which was our earlier projects that got canceled before Overwatch 1."Titan was an MMO project Blizzard was developing in the years following the release of World of Warcraft, but the project was eventually scrapped. Much of what was created for Titan eventually was repurposed into Overwatch, and that included a number of characters. Concept art for Echo was among the things originally made for Titan, and Goodman said it was one character the development team particularly liked, which helped Echo to be eventually added to the new game.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The latest in tech, gadgets, and electronics can make for excellent gifts, and they don't always have to break the bank (in fact, you can find plenty of cool tech gifts under $50). However, if you're looking to splurge for a special occasion like a graduation, birthday, or anything in between, then you might be wondering what the absolute best tech gifts are. With everything from iPads and AirPods to Elite controllers and coffee makers, there is a ton to choose from, and it can get overwhelming fast. Thankfully, we've got you covered.We've rounded up the best tech gift ideas, so read on for some great ideas for that special person in your life--or even a nice treat for yourself. Just keep in mind that the prices below indicate the regular price and won't reflect any discounts or fluctuations--Amazon regularly discounts most products, so you might get one of these awesome items for a cheaper price.Quick look: The best tech gifts for 2020Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic may cause some disruptions in Amazon's shipments of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom Eternal, the retailer has confirmed. Customers who have pre-ordered either title through the online retailer have been receiving emails notifying them that there may be a delay in their delivery, as the company will "temporarily" be prioritizing shipping out household and medical items."As COVID-19 has spread, we've recently seen an increase in people shopping online which has had an impact on how we serve our customers," Amazon said in a statement shared with GameSpot. "So in the short term, we are temporarily prioritizing household staples, medical supplies, and other high demand products coming into our fulfillment centers so we can more quickly receive, restock, and ship these products to customers. As a result, customers who ordered Animal Crossing: New Horizon or Doom Eternal may experience a delay in the delivery of their items. We are very sorry for the inconvenience this may cause our customers."Doom and Animal Crossing certainly aren't the only games that may be impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak. Square Enix recently shared a message informing fans that although Final Fantasy VII Remake is still scheduled to launch on April 10, the coronavirus outbreak may prevent some from being able to get the game on launch day.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Times are tough right now for everyone. Social distancing has people feeling isolated, and things are generally a bit scary no matter where you are. Luckily, there is a wonderfully wholesome remedy on the way in the form of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. And, well, dammit, I need it now. I've got virtual fruit to pick, fake mortgages to amass, and the fossilized remains of prehistoric creatures to collect, catalog, and enshrine. (Have you ever considered how cute Animal Crossing dinosaurs would be? Makes you think.)It's been a long, long wait for the game, whether you're looking at how long it's been since the last core entry (New Leaf in 2013) or even just when New Horizons itself was set to be released before its delay (sometime in 2019, which feels like an eternity ago). While many had hoped Nintendo would break its own release date and start selling it early--there was even a petition to that effect--that hasn't happened.That means we're stuck counting down every last second until its unlock time on the Eshop, which we expect to be 9 PM PT on March 19 (12 AM ET on March 20) in the US. If you're like us, that won't stop you from refreshing the Eshop, repeatedly trying to open the preloaded game, restarting your system, and messing with the console's date in the hopes that the game will shake loose like a dangling Snickers in a vending machine. It ain't gonna work, so save yourself the heartache.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

March has brought a ton of Legendary Pokemon to Pokemon Go, and now one more is set to arrive before the month officially wraps up. Niantic has announced that Landorus, the third and final member of the Forces of Nature trio from Pokemon Black and White, will appear in Pokemon Go beginning March 31.Until April 21, you'll be able to encounter Landorus around the world in five-star Raids. That isn't the only way you'll be able to catch the Legendary, however; Landorus will also be available as a Go Battle League reward for a limited time. You can read more about the Legendary on the official Pokemon Go website.Attention, Trainers! Landorus will be making its Pokémon GO debut soon! https://t.co/0xlPxog1cy pic.twitter.com/xSzjCThA2I — Pokémon GO (@PokemonGoApp) March 19, 2020In the meantime, another Gen 5 Legendary, Cobalion, is available in Go again as part of a limited-time Raid event, which is set to end March 23. The Legendary Lugia will also return for its own Raid event from March 24-31. Each of those two Pokemon has a special event-exclusive move this time around, and you may encounter their Shiny forms.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Square Enix has become the latest publisher to comment on the impact of COVID-19 (coronavirus). In a blog post, Square Enix Americas and Europe CEO Phil Rogers started off by saying the teams at Square Enix are supporting each other and their families and friends, as well as the gaming community at large, during this stressful time.Rogers said Square Enix has been following the health and safety guidelines that local governments have put forward recently. In February, Square Enix stopped allowing domestic and international business travel for its employees, in addition to limiting the number of people who visit its offices.Additionally, Square Enix is now allowing its developers to work from home, similar to countless other developers, including Bungie and Rockstar Games.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has expanded with new DLC since it released, and we've still got six more fighters to look forward to. We're not sure who is being added, but according to game director Masahiro Sakurai, it's possible that reveals and releases will be delayed due to the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus).In Sakurai's latest column in Japanese Famitsu magazine (as translated by Siliconera), Sakurai has spoken about the impact of the pandemic on the development of new fighters for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. "My plans to present new fighter proposal(s) to publisher(s) have been delayed indefinitely as I haven’t been able to meet up with those involved," he said.Sakurai also noted that the entire building would be locked down if anyone was found to be infected, "and game development will be completely halted."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

While most companies are being forced to push back releases and development due to COVID-19, Panic has publicly announced how development is proceeding despite everything going on. Development of the Playdate handheld gaming system is still early on, but the team at Panic has been gaining momentum fast. In a recent tweet on the Playdate account, Panic announced what measures they will be taking to ensure the safety of their employees and the current status of their production.Quick update. The Playdate team is now all working from home, but we're still getting a lot done. Right now we're working with our Season One game teams to finalize and QA test their games, preparing for our developer preview (soon!), adding new features to our OS, and more. — Playdate (@playdate) March 19, 2020Our factory in Malaysia has shut down — for at least a few weeks. But it's for the greater good. And it won't impact the developer preview, as those units, a few hundred, are already built and ready to be shipped to those randomly chosen to receive them, once that page goes live. — Playdate (@playdate) March 19, 2020The Playdate is a brand new handheld gaming system from the publishers of Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game. Panic, the company behind Playdate, is working with a number of developers to produce 12 new games that will be released one per week after the eventual retail release of the system. For more on just what the Playdate is, head over to Panic’s blog.Like most companies, the Playdate team has moved to working from home, where they will continue to work on some of the final pieces for the developer preview units being shipped out. The 12 games that are a part of Season One of the Playdate rollout are still being finalized and quality tested. Final tweaks and additional features to the Playdate OS are also being worked on from home.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Overwatch has just added a new hero, Echo, to the Public Test Server, and she will be coming to the main game soon. Echo is a versatile Damage character, and Blizzard has promised that there are more Tank and Support characters incoming. However, you'll have to wait for Overwatch 2 to launch before you can get your hands on them.Talking to IGN Nordic, director Jeff Kaplan has confirmed that we'd have to wait for the sequel for more characters. "Currently Echo is the last hero coming to standard Overwatch," he said.Blizzard has previously announced that any hero that gets added to Overwatch 2 will also be added to the original game, which means that more heroes will be added once the sequel launches. We have reason to believe that multiple new characters are in development for the sequel.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

With seemingly the whole world enveloped by discussion and concern around COVID-19 (coronavirus), it might be easy to forget another terrible tragedy that impacted Australia earlier this year. Horrible bushfires ripped through the country, destroying land and causing deaths and other devastation that the country won't soon recover from. Destiny developer Bungie raised money to support the bushfire relief efforts, and now the company has revealed it raised $1 million through its campaign.The Bungie Foundation, which is the developer's charitable arm, raised $1 million ($1.7 million AUD) through sales of the "Guardians for Australia" t-shirt. Bungie sold more than 75,000 shirts since they went on sale in January. The $1 million will be donated to the NSW Rural Fire Service and WIRES.The shirt features kangaroos and a gumtree, as well as Destiny ship. It also comes with a special in-game emblem.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Guilty Gear Strive is getting a closed beta ahead of its release later this year on PlayStation 4. Arc System Works has announced that anyone interested is now free to apply for the beta through their website, and potentially test the game out early.The beta will feature seven characters--Sol, Ky, May, Axl, Chip, Potemkin, and Faust--and will run from April 16 to 19. Applications are open from now until April 5, and players who get into the beta will be notified from April 12.These early players will be able to see how the game compares to previous entries in the series ahead of its appearance at Evo 2020 (assuming Evo still goes ahead--as of right now, it has not been canceled).Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

It may seem like Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the only game coming to the Nintendo Switch this week, but it’s actually not. Both March 20 and 26 have some great indie titles that need to be talked about more.While we are all in self isolation, there's never been a better time to play games. In between visiting hanging out with your villagers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, why not head over to the Eshop and check out titles like the stunning visual adventure Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York, the Greek-inspired rhythm adventure Rhythm of the Gods, or Russian action arcade shooter Mist Hunter.One Piece fans will have been counting down the days for One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4, the latest installation to the Pirate Warriors franchise. Break through hordes of enemies in a real One Piece battlefield with all your favorite characters.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Shaun of the Dead is an incredibly popular comedy movie starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The film parodies the famous zombie film Dawn Of The Dead, poking fun at the idea of how an average British guy deals with a viral outbreak and the snowball effect it can have on society. Pretty topical right now, huh?Many iconic quotes and scenes came from the film, one of which is ‘The Plan’ scene, where in the group of survivors brainstorm what the plan will be and how they are going to the pub. Heading to the pub until it all blows over is a classic British reaction to any situation and some people may be thinking of doing the same during the COVID-19 crisis.In response to the general public world wide entering self isolation, Pegg and Frost have released a new take on the classic scene, updating it with important information on what should instead be done.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The next-generation of consoles continues to come into focus. Both Microsoft and Sony have shared a lot of details on their new consoles in recent weeks, and one element that is resonating particularly strongly with consumers is their different approaches to backwards compatibility--or, at least, the messaging of how this much-loved feature will be implemented. Right now, based on what we know today, Microsoft's Xbox Series X has a huge advantage over Sony's PlayStation 5 in terms of overall list of supported backwards compatible games and messaging about the feature.What We KnowSony's "deep dive" on the PlayStation 5 this week saw PlayStation system architect Mark Cerny giving an extremely developer-focused talk about the technical specifics of the next-gen system. On the subject of backwards compatibility, Cerny mentioned that Sony expected nearly 100 of the most popular PS4 games to be playable on PS5 at launch this holiday.A subsequent post on the PlayStation Blog offered some additional insight. It reported that "almost" all of the top 100 PS4 titles ranked by play time will be playable at launch for PS5. Sony also stated that there have been more than 4000 titles published on PS4 to date. Doing some quick math on those numbers, it would appear that 2.5 percent of the PS4's catalog will be playable on PS5 at launch. Sony said it is currently in the "testing process" with the aim for expanding the backwards compatibility catalog over time, so the library is sure to grow, but right now it seems likely that some of your favorite PS4 games won't play on PS5 at launch.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has led to many gaming events being cancelled or postponed, including GDC 2020, was due to happen from March 16-20. Now, GDC has announced a new event for 2020, called GDC Summer, which will happen later this year.GDC Summer 2020 is planned to run from August 4-6, and will be split between presentations, interviews, and a two-day show floor that will be accessible on August 5 and 6. It will take place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.Registration is not open yet, early-bird pricing will mean that Conference Passes are available for $299, with Expo Passes for those who just want to visit the show floor costing $99. These prices will end on July 10.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com