New Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Fighter to Be Revealed at the Game Awards 2020

Nintendo has announced that the next Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fighter will be revealed at The Game Awards 2020. In a tweet from the company's European Twitter account, a message simply stated that "A new #SmashBrosUltimate fighter will be revealed at #TheGameAwards tonight." It was accompanied by an envelope with a Smash Bros. seal and a gold backdrop that does little to hint at who the fighter could be. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate added Steve from Minecraft to the fight in October earlier this year, who came with a rather unfortunate NSFW victory pose. Outside of the game, amiibo for Persona's Joker and Dragon Quest 11's Hero fighters were released in October, too. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/10/14/super-smash-bros-ultimate-12-minutes-of-minecraft-steve-gameplay"] For more on what to expect at The Game Awards 2020, check out the nominations, the news of 12-15 new reveals, and that Ghost of Tsushima has won the Player's Voice award. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.

Cyberpunk 2077’s Streaming Mode Still Plays a Copyrighted Song

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red has issued an apology and notification that the game’s streaming mode - designed to prevent DMCA strikes - still contains a copyrighted music track. In a tweet from the Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account, the developer said “We just noticed there's a song in the game which might put a DMCA strike on your channel even when playing with “Disable Copyrighted Music” option on.” The track plays during the first two Braindance sequences of the game, which occur early on during the story’s first string of quests. CD Projekt Red advises that players streaming the game turn off the game’s sound while playing through these sections, at least until they have fixed the problem. This will certainly prove an inconvenience for early streamers, provided of course they have even seen this warning. Prominent streaming platform Twitch has recently clamped down on copyrighted material, issuing strict DMCA takedowns in a manner it admits has been handled poorly. DMCA - Digital Millennium Copyright Act - enforces that videos containing copyrighted material such as songs must be taken down, and Twitch users have had accounts banned in the past for repeated infringements. According to Twitch itself, the issue is generally streamers playing music over games rather than the music in games themselves, but the increase in DMCA pressures has clearly made CDPR cautious, hence the included “Disable Copyrighted Music” option. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/12/10/cyberpunk-2077-review-with-new-gameplay"] For more on Cyberpunk, be sure to take a look at our massive Cyberpunk 2077 guide which will help you find your feet in Night City, as well as the news that the PS4 and Xbox One versions are experiencing issues, and that the game sold 8 million copies before it even released. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer. 

Cyberpunk 2077 Smashes Steam’s Record for Concurrent Players in a Single Player Game

Cyberpunk has set a new record for the highest number of concurrent players in a single player game, dominating the previous high by more than double. As tracked by Steam Database, Cyberpunk 2077 saw a record high of 1,003,262 players within hours of it launching at midnight GMT on December 10. The previous peak players for a single player video game on Steam was held by Fallout 4, which back at its launch in 2015 achieved 472,962 players. As you can see, Cyberpunk 2077 has more than doubled that record. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/12/09/cyberpunk-2077-the-first-20-minutes-of-corporate-path-gameplay-4k-60fps-ultra-rtx"] It’s worth noting that this will not account for every PC player; Cyberpunk 2077 is also available across GOG and Epic Games Store, too, and so the true concurrent peak for PC is likely to be higher. Factoring in consoles and Stadia, too, and there were certainly a lot of people playing Cyberpunk within hours of its release. If you’re starting out on your Cyberpunk 2077 journey, don’t forget that we’ve got all the help you could need; check out our Night City map to plan your missions and visit our Cyberpunk 2077 walkthrough if you need a guide for the quests. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.

Cyberpunk 2077 on Base PS4 and Xbox One Units Has Major Issues

Cyberpunk 2077 has sold extremely well already, but those playing the game on their original PS4s and Xbox Ones have been reporting major issues with resolution, frame rate, texture pop-in, and more. Many users across Twitch and social media are documenting the game's performance on their older machines, and the results are very often not pretty. Perhaps the most notable comparison is the meme below (taken from a stream by GamekultLive, at around the 1:01:00 mark): Cyberpunk 2077 is currently a last-gen game on console (although does benefit from new-gen hardware improvements), and has been advertised as such, but was never shown running pre-release on original PS4 and Xbox One units. While it's not unexpected that Cyberpunk would make graphical compromises in order to run on older console models, the level to which fidelity drops has surprised and disappointed many. Across both consoles, users are reporting long waits for textures to load, a blurring effect across the entire screen, and major frame rate drops. Bugs also remain prevalent, with players reporting T-posing NPCs, no mouth movement in conversations, and glitching animations: Widespread reports of crashes, particularly on PS4, have also been circling: It's unclear if all of the examples above are running with the Day One patch installed - although some players (including Kotaku) are reporting that they don't seem to have been able to download it at all. However, our own base Xbox One footage is updated to the Day One version, and does have moments where textures fail to load and frame rates drop (particularly in the montage sequence towards the end): [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/12/10/cyberpunk-2077-11-minutes-of-xbox-one-base-model-gameplay"] While CD Projekt Red hasn't directly commented on the issues, the Cyberpunk Twitter account today said, "The journey has just begun and we are hard at work on the upcoming fixes and updates to the game." CD Projekt Red famously provided multiple patches to its last open world game, The Witcher 3, which had its own litany of bugs. It'll be fascinating to see how much work can be done to the console versions, especially while new-gen versions are still in development. For more on Cyberpunk, check out our review of the game, and hop into our huge Cyberpunk 2077 guide, which indludes a full campaign walkthrough. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Cyberpunk 2077 Sold 8 Million Copies Before Launch

CD Projekt Red has announced that Cyberpunk 2077 sold eight million copies prior to its launch. Posting to Twitter on launch day, CD Projekt Red's official investor relations Twitter account revealed that the game had sold eight million preorders worldwide. The official Cyberpunk account followed up thanking fans for their support, noting that "the journey has just begun. "We are hard at work on the upcoming fixes and updates to the game," the tweet reads. That's more than the population of Bulgaria, if we're keeping score. Digital storefronts Steam and GOG.com struggled to deal with the launch of Cyberpunk, with many outage issues reported as the game rolled out across the globe. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/12/10/cyberpunk-2077-review-with-new-gameplay"] In other Cyberpunk news, check out our review of the game - we scored it a 9, touting its "beautiful, dense cityscape." And if you're just starting to dig into Night City, it'd be a good idea to check out our Tips and Tricks guide to help you understand some of the game's systems and make the opening hours easier. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Promising Young Woman: How to See the Acclaimed New Thriller for Free

Promising Young Woman is one of the year's most talked-about movies. The revenge thriller starring Carey Mulligan opens Christmas Day ... but we have a way you can see it over a week earlier -- and for free! In case you haven't seen the trailer yet -- which is posted below -- Promising Young Woman is, as its official synopsis promises, "a delicious new take on revenge. Everyone said Cassie (Mulligan) was a promising young woman... until a mysterious event abruptly derailed her future.  But nothing in Cassie’s life is what it appears to be: she’s wickedly smart, tantalizingly cunning, and she’s living a secret double life by night.  Now, an unexpected encounter is about to give Cassie a chance to right the wrongs of the past in this thrilling and wildly entertaining story." The first 10 people to fill out this form will get to attend the film's virtual premiere on Wednesday, December 16th at 5:30PM PT, watch the movie for free followed by a Q&A with writer-director Emerald Fennell (Killing Eve) and Carey Mulligan. And if that's not enough, attendees will then be treated to a performance by Cyn. (Additional RSVP's are being accepted for the Waitlist, but do not guarantee entry. Please note you are NOT confirmed until you receive an email from Focus Features Events.) [ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/03/06/promising-young-woman-official-trailer-1] In addition to Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman also stars Bo Burnham, Alison Brie, Connie Britton, Adam Brody, Jennifer Coolidge, Laverne Cox, Max Greenfield, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chris Lowell, Sam Richardson, Molly Shannon, and Clancy Brown. Promising Young Woman opens December 25, 2020.

Cyberpunk 2077 PC Launch Causes Steam, GOG Issues

If you’re reading this, Cyberpunk 2077 has officially launched across the globe. With the launch of perhaps the most anticipated game of the year, it appears that the sudden rush of players attempting to boot up and/or download the game has resulted in Steam and CD Projekt's GOG experiencing some persistent technical issues. This has resulted in at least some players being unable to finish downloading Cyberpunk 2077’s day one patch or sync up with GOG’s cloud.

As of 4:30 P.M. PST, Steam’s own data statistics page shows the service is experiencing a peak bandwidth consumption of 17.7 terabytes per second. Basically, that’s a lot of people “jacking in” to the game. Some players are even experiencing a sudden pause near the end of the 60GB download.

DownDetector's Steam page also reported approximately 23,000 reports of Steam issues as of 4:50 P.M. PST.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a video game launch without many fans taking to social media to lament their momentary inconvenience. At least there’s some gems.

 steam 4 steam 3 steam 2 steam 1 Notably, it appears Steam's storefront page is experiencing intermittent blackouts as well. We tested this out on one PC of our own and noticed the storefront page struggle to load, if it would load at all for a time. steam 5 Odds are by the time you read this, CD Projekt, Steam, and GOG may have solved their technical issues, and downloading Cyberpunk 2077 may not be an issue. Of course, Cyberpunk joins the long list of massive AAA releases that experience launch issues thanks to the sudden influx of excited players. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/12/07/cyberpunk-2077-review"] IGN gave Cyberpunk 2077 a 9 out of 10, calling it a "beautiful and dazzlingly dense cityscape" with "a staggering amount of choice" marred by frequent bugs. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/narcoleptic samurai for IGN.

AT&T Sells Crunchyroll to Sony Funimation for $1.2 Billion

AT&T has announced that it will sell its Crunchyroll animation business to Funimation, which itself is owned by Sony. In a deal worth almost $1.2 billion, Crunchyroll, one of the leading anime streaming services will now be owned by Funimation, another North American bastion for anime. Crunchyroll reports that it has 90 million registered users in over 200 countries. “We are excited to embark on this new journey. Crunchyroll has built a world-class brand with a passionate fan-base of over 3M subscribers, 50M social followers and 90M registered users. These amazing fans have helped to propel anime into a global phenomenon,” says Crunchryoll general manager Joann Waage. “Combining the strength of the Crunchyroll brand and the expertise of our global team with Funimation is an exciting prospect and a win for the incredible art form of anime.” [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=top-25-best-anime-series-of-all-time&captions=true"] In a separate statement from Funimation, company CEO Colin Decker says, “The union of Funimation and Crunchyroll is a win for anime fans around the world that will elevate the art and culture of this medium for decades to come. Combining these two great companies will be a win for fans and enable us to compete at a truly global scale.” Both Crunchyroll and Funimation offer direct-to-consumer anime streaming services with monthly subscription costs. In recent years Crunchyroll has dabbled in producing its own anime with titles like Tower of God and God of High School. Meanwhile, Funimation offers day 1 English dubs for its exclusive shows. Both services were once available together on the VRV service, but that is no longer the case. It’s unclear what the path forward will be for the two anime streaming services now that they’re under the same company. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN.

Cyberpunk 2077 Review Impressions

On this week's episode of IGN's weekly PlayStation show, Podcast Beyond!, host Jonathon Dornbush is joined by Brian Altano, Max Scoville, and Tom Marks to discuss Tom's Cyberpunk 2077 review (and it's all spoiler free!). We dive into his thoughts on the world design, freedom of choice, gameplay, and more. Plus, we talk a bit about Persona 5 Strikers coming to the west, the future of BioWare, and more! And yes, Max finally gets to talk about how much he enjoys Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Watch the new episode above. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=cyberpunk-2077-pc-gameplay-screenshots&captions=true"] Podcast Beyond! is live every Wednesday. For more on PS5, check out our PS5 console review, and our PS5 wiki guide if you're picking one up this week.   [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jonathon Dornbush is IGN's Senior News Editor, host of Podcast Beyond!, and PlayStation lead. Talk to him on Twitter @jmdornbush.