240Hz gaming monitors have come a long way. Whereas a couple of years ago every 240Hz gaming monitor was just another TN display sacrificing color and contrast for maximum frame rate, these days you’ll find just as many VA and IPS screens that look substantially better. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=acer-predator-xb3-gaming-monitor-preview&captions=true"] Acer’s latest Predator XB3 pretty much sets the gold standard for what a 240Hz gaming monitor should be now. It features a fast IPS panel that can hit 240Hz while displaying a bright and colorful HDR picture at 400-nits. What really sets it apart from other IPS displays in its class is it also features a 0.5ms response time while also supporting FreeSync Premium Pro and G-Sync compatibility. And if that wasn’t enough to make the Acer Predator XB3 standout, it also features integrated RGB lighting just under the display. We’ve been using the monitor for a few days now and we’ve been blown away by its great picture quality paired with its incredibly fast refresh rate. Thanks to it being G-Sync compatible, we also haven’t seen a single torn frame even as we wildly whip our mouse around trying to freeze everyone with Mei in Overwatch. Instead, every frame of animation looks like a crisp still image, allowing us to easily track targets and line up headshots. The only thing we wished was a little better on the monitor was the integration of the RGB bar lighting. For now, it doesn’t seem like there’s any software to tie its effects or color to your games. By comparison, MSI has used GameSense to tie reloading alerts to the RGB lighting on its monitors. Of course, this is only just an early preview of an early unit right now, so some software may develop by the time of our final review. The Acer Predator XB3 gaming monitor will release later this September for a starting price of $429. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Kevin Lee is IGN's Hardware and Roundups Editor. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

240Hz gaming monitors have come a long way. Whereas a couple of years ago every 240Hz gaming monitor was just another TN display sacrificing color and contrast for maximum frame rate, these days you’ll find just as many VA and IPS screens that look substantially better. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=acer-predator-xb3-gaming-monitor-preview&captions=true"] Acer’s latest Predator XB3 pretty much sets the gold standard for what a 240Hz gaming monitor should be now. It features a fast IPS panel that can hit 240Hz while displaying a bright and colorful HDR picture at 400-nits. What really sets it apart from other IPS displays in its class is it also features a 0.5ms response time while also supporting FreeSync Premium Pro and G-Sync compatibility. And if that wasn’t enough to make the Acer Predator XB3 standout, it also features integrated RGB lighting just under the display. We’ve been using the monitor for a few days now and we’ve been blown away by its great picture quality paired with its incredibly fast refresh rate. Thanks to it being G-Sync compatible, we also haven’t seen a single torn frame even as we wildly whip our mouse around trying to freeze everyone with Mei in Overwatch. Instead, every frame of animation looks like a crisp still image, allowing us to easily track targets and line up headshots. The only thing we wished was a little better on the monitor was the integration of the RGB bar lighting. For now, it doesn’t seem like there’s any software to tie its effects or color to your games. By comparison, MSI has used GameSense to tie reloading alerts to the RGB lighting on its monitors. Of course, this is only just an early preview of an early unit right now, so some software may develop by the time of our final review. The Acer Predator XB3 gaming monitor will release later this September for a starting price of $429. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Kevin Lee is IGN's Hardware and Roundups Editor. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

EA CEO Andrew Wilson has revealed that he wants to "double down" on the developer's creative partnership with Disney to make Star Wars games. The company held a fireside chat webinar with investors this week (via Gamespot). During the conference, Wilson alluded to the financial success of the modern Star Wars: Battlefront series, Respawn's Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and the mobile game Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes as part of his reasoning for further commitment to the licence. "We're going to double down on that partnership," Wilson explains. "Disney continues to be very very committed to the IP and to the canon." Wilson sees strong opportunity in the future of the partnership as new fans connect with the Star Wars franchise. "We've got new generations [of fans] coming to the IP all the time," Wilson adds. "So our expectation is we think there continues to be a really really strong opportunity in an around that relationship and that IP going forward." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/06/19/star-wars-squadrons-is-an-intense-space-dogfighting-game-with-no-microtransactions"] Wilson also talked about the long relationship EA has with the Star Wars licence, extending all the way back to Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic, which first launched in 2011. EA Star Wars games currently in the pipeline include the recently revealed Star Wars Squadrons, a starfighter simulator where you conduct space battles in a variety of iconic Star Wars spaceships. You can check out our article here running through the first gameplay details for Squadrons. The game is being developed by EA Motive and will be available on VR platforms, PC, PS4 and Xbox One, with the game launching on October 2 this year. The game will not feature microtransactions. If you missed the EA Play Live conference and want a run-down of every game announced at the event, check out our article which covers every reveal, from Zoink's Lost in Random to Skate. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.   

EA CEO Andrew Wilson has revealed that he wants to "double down" on the developer's creative partnership with Disney to make Star Wars games. The company held a fireside chat webinar with investors this week (via Gamespot). During the conference, Wilson alluded to the financial success of the modern Star Wars: Battlefront series, Respawn's Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and the mobile game Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes as part of his reasoning for further commitment to the licence. "We're going to double down on that partnership," Wilson explains. "Disney continues to be very very committed to the IP and to the canon." Wilson sees strong opportunity in the future of the partnership as new fans connect with the Star Wars franchise. "We've got new generations [of fans] coming to the IP all the time," Wilson adds. "So our expectation is we think there continues to be a really really strong opportunity in an around that relationship and that IP going forward." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/06/19/star-wars-squadrons-is-an-intense-space-dogfighting-game-with-no-microtransactions"] Wilson also talked about the long relationship EA has with the Star Wars licence, extending all the way back to Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic, which first launched in 2011. EA Star Wars games currently in the pipeline include the recently revealed Star Wars Squadrons, a starfighter simulator where you conduct space battles in a variety of iconic Star Wars spaceships. You can check out our article here running through the first gameplay details for Squadrons. The game is being developed by EA Motive and will be available on VR platforms, PC, PS4 and Xbox One, with the game launching on October 2 this year. The game will not feature microtransactions. If you missed the EA Play Live conference and want a run-down of every game announced at the event, check out our article which covers every reveal, from Zoink's Lost in Random to Skate. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.   

The founder of British games studio Traveller's Tales (best known for its LEGO games) has revealed that, in 2008, the company spent more than $1,000,000 on a failed pitch to make a tie-in game for Peter Jackson's The Hobbit series. Jon Burton posted a video to his YouTube channel GameHut explaining the situation and featured footage from the tech demos used to pitch the game to Peter Jackson and then-director Guillermo Del Toro. Instead of LEGO Games for which the studio was known, the team made photorealistic recreations of key scenes from The Lord of the Rings movies on Xbox 360 hardware, including Gandalf fighting the Balrog, Arogorn fighting Uruk-Hai at Amon Hen, and stealth gameplay where you'd play as Frodo in Deephallow Woods, avoiding the Black Riders. It's very much worth watching the video, but here are some screenshots: [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=travellers-tales-cancelled-lord-of-the-rings-game-images&captions=true"] The footage is seriously impressive, but according to Burton, the team "went way too far, and spent way too much money" on the project in order to impress Jackson and Del Toro at a pitch meeting in New Zealand. Del Toro was apparently very receptive, but Warner Bros. ultimately decided that it "wanted a game that wasn't directly based on the movie, but happened in the same universe at the same time," a philosophy Burton disagreed with (but likely led to the birth of games like Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor). As a result, the game never saw the light of day, which is a massive shame as the more-than decade-old footage genuinely holds up in retrospect. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2014/12/22/ranking-peter-jacksons-lord-of-the-rings-and-hobbit-movies"] For more on Lord of the Rings, check out our article covering The Second Age, the setting for Amazon's upcoming Lord of the Rings TV prequel. You can also check out some screenshots of Lord of the Rings: Gollum, the next-gen stealth game coming from Daedalic. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

The founder of British games studio Traveller's Tales (best known for its LEGO games) has revealed that, in 2008, the company spent more than $1,000,000 on a failed pitch to make a tie-in game for Peter Jackson's The Hobbit series. Jon Burton posted a video to his YouTube channel GameHut explaining the situation and featured footage from the tech demos used to pitch the game to Peter Jackson and then-director Guillermo Del Toro. Instead of LEGO Games for which the studio was known, the team made photorealistic recreations of key scenes from The Lord of the Rings movies on Xbox 360 hardware, including Gandalf fighting the Balrog, Arogorn fighting Uruk-Hai at Amon Hen, and stealth gameplay where you'd play as Frodo in Deephallow Woods, avoiding the Black Riders. It's very much worth watching the video, but here are some screenshots: [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=travellers-tales-cancelled-lord-of-the-rings-game-images&captions=true"] The footage is seriously impressive, but according to Burton, the team "went way too far, and spent way too much money" on the project in order to impress Jackson and Del Toro at a pitch meeting in New Zealand. Del Toro was apparently very receptive, but Warner Bros. ultimately decided that it "wanted a game that wasn't directly based on the movie, but happened in the same universe at the same time," a philosophy Burton disagreed with (but likely led to the birth of games like Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor). As a result, the game never saw the light of day, which is a massive shame as the more-than decade-old footage genuinely holds up in retrospect. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2014/12/22/ranking-peter-jacksons-lord-of-the-rings-and-hobbit-movies"] For more on Lord of the Rings, check out our article covering The Second Age, the setting for Amazon's upcoming Lord of the Rings TV prequel. You can also check out some screenshots of Lord of the Rings: Gollum, the next-gen stealth game coming from Daedalic. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Earth Defense Force 6 has been officially revealed by series publisher D3, with the game expected to launch in 2021. Alongside that, a voxel-based spin-off, Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is also on the way. The 2021 date suggests that Earth Defense Force 6 will land on next-generation consoles, which launch this holiday season, but no official platforms for the game have been announced just yet. The game's website doesn't offer much information beyond a suite of screenshots (below), which as you might expect, include massive bugs terrorizing an urban landscape. It looks very much like an Earth Defense Force game, where a team of humans (often in co-op groups) must flesh out character builds and fight to rid the world of a bug scourge with increasingly absurd weaponry. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=earth-defense-force-6-screenshots&captions=true"] As well as EDF 6, a voxel-based Earth Defence Force game has been revealed, titled Earth Defense Force: World Brothers. The change in art style looks like a great fit, and according to its website, the predicament facing the World Brothers is that "Earth has become a square?" The game features characters from across the entire EDF series, and it will land on Nintendo Switch and PS4 at some point this year. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=earth-defense-force-world-brothers-images&captions=true"] Neither game has so far been announced for western release. The EDF series has traditionally featured long gaps between Japanese release and a western release, but spin-off Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain launched simultaneously worldwide, which might offer some hope to fans of giant bug slaughter. Check out IGN's review of Iron Rain from April 2019, where we called the last entry in the series "a more-than-pleasant experiment, a game that feels like it was made by fans of the series with their own ideas". [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Earth Defense Force 6 has been officially revealed by series publisher D3, with the game expected to launch in 2021. Alongside that, a voxel-based spin-off, Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is also on the way. The 2021 date suggests that Earth Defense Force 6 will land on next-generation consoles, which launch this holiday season, but no official platforms for the game have been announced just yet. The game's website doesn't offer much information beyond a suite of screenshots (below), which as you might expect, include massive bugs terrorizing an urban landscape. It looks very much like an Earth Defense Force game, where a team of humans (often in co-op groups) must flesh out character builds and fight to rid the world of a bug scourge with increasingly absurd weaponry. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=earth-defense-force-6-screenshots&captions=true"] As well as EDF 6, a voxel-based Earth Defence Force game has been revealed, titled Earth Defense Force: World Brothers. The change in art style looks like a great fit, and according to its website, the predicament facing the World Brothers is that "Earth has become a square?" The game features characters from across the entire EDF series, and it will land on Nintendo Switch and PS4 at some point this year. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=earth-defense-force-world-brothers-images&captions=true"] Neither game has so far been announced for western release. The EDF series has traditionally featured long gaps between Japanese release and a western release, but spin-off Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain launched simultaneously worldwide, which might offer some hope to fans of giant bug slaughter. Check out IGN's review of Iron Rain from April 2019, where we called the last entry in the series "a more-than-pleasant experiment, a game that feels like it was made by fans of the series with their own ideas". [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda has explained why he allowed the upcoming movie musical to be censored on Disney Plus. Taking to Twitter on Monday, Miranda confirmed that the lyrics of two explicit songs have minor alterations in the filmed version of the original Broadway production, which arrives on Disney's streaming platform, July 3.

LANGUAGE! 1. On July 3, you're getting the whole show, every note & scene, & a 1-minute countdown clock during intermission (bathroom!) 2. But MPAA has a hard rule about language: more than 1 utterance of "Fuck" is an automatic R rating. We have 3 "Fucks" in our show. So... 1/2 https://t.co/7o3OQ34rqt

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) June 22, 2020

Miranda was responding to a fan who questioned why the movie had received a PG-13 rating, rather than an R-rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and asked whether any iconic lines had been cut or changed for the movie to reach this categorization. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/06/22/hamilton-official-trailer"] In his reply, Miranda revealed that Yorktown, the 20th song of Act One, and Washington on Your Side, the 8th song of Act Two, had been edited for mature language. "You're getting the whole show, every note & scene, & a 1-minute countdown clock during intermission (bathroom!)," Miranda explained in his tweet on Monday. "But the MPAA has a hard rule about language: more than 1 utterance of 'F***' is an automatic R rating. We have 3 'F***s' in our show. "I literally gave two f***s so the kids could see it: 1. In Yorktown, there's a mute over 'I get the f*** back up again' 2. 'Southern *record scratch*kin' Democratic Republicans.' You can sing whatEVER you like at home (even sync up the album)!" [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-best-movies-on-disney&captions=true"] For those somehow unfamiliar with the wildly successful musical, Hamilton is a dramatization of the life of Founding Father and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, tracing his story from his arrival in New York City at the dawn of the Revolutionary War through to his ill-fated duel with rival Aaron Burr in 1804. The musical features a unique combination of hip-hop, R&B, soul, and show tunes to help examine Hamilton's story through a modern lens. Hamilton debuts on Disney+ on July 3. If you want to learn more, we recommend Gore Vidal's book "Burr," as an "enjoyable and even necessary companion piece" to the hit stage show. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda has explained why he allowed the upcoming movie musical to be censored on Disney Plus. Taking to Twitter on Monday, Miranda confirmed that the lyrics of two explicit songs have minor alterations in the filmed version of the original Broadway production, which arrives on Disney's streaming platform, July 3.

LANGUAGE! 1. On July 3, you're getting the whole show, every note & scene, & a 1-minute countdown clock during intermission (bathroom!) 2. But MPAA has a hard rule about language: more than 1 utterance of "Fuck" is an automatic R rating. We have 3 "Fucks" in our show. So... 1/2 https://t.co/7o3OQ34rqt

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) June 22, 2020

Miranda was responding to a fan who questioned why the movie had received a PG-13 rating, rather than an R-rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and asked whether any iconic lines had been cut or changed for the movie to reach this categorization. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/06/22/hamilton-official-trailer"] In his reply, Miranda revealed that Yorktown, the 20th song of Act One, and Washington on Your Side, the 8th song of Act Two, had been edited for mature language. "You're getting the whole show, every note & scene, & a 1-minute countdown clock during intermission (bathroom!)," Miranda explained in his tweet on Monday. "But the MPAA has a hard rule about language: more than 1 utterance of 'F***' is an automatic R rating. We have 3 'F***s' in our show. "I literally gave two f***s so the kids could see it: 1. In Yorktown, there's a mute over 'I get the f*** back up again' 2. 'Southern *record scratch*kin' Democratic Republicans.' You can sing whatEVER you like at home (even sync up the album)!" [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-best-movies-on-disney&captions=true"] For those somehow unfamiliar with the wildly successful musical, Hamilton is a dramatization of the life of Founding Father and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, tracing his story from his arrival in New York City at the dawn of the Revolutionary War through to his ill-fated duel with rival Aaron Burr in 1804. The musical features a unique combination of hip-hop, R&B, soul, and show tunes to help examine Hamilton's story through a modern lens. Hamilton debuts on Disney+ on July 3. If you want to learn more, we recommend Gore Vidal's book "Burr," as an "enjoyable and even necessary companion piece" to the hit stage show. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.