Gears of War 3 Was Ported to PS3, But Was Never Going to See Release
Epic Games created a PlayStation 3 port of Gears of War 3 as part of its internal Unreal Engine testing process, but never had any intention of releasing the Xbox 360-exclusive game on the platform.
The discovery of the PS3 port comes from new footage released by a former hacker known online as PixelButts. The footage, which shows a rough, buggy version of the game playing on PS3 hardware, was posted to YouTube. While the footage shows Xbox button prompts, a report from Kotaku reveals that the build is indeed running on a PlayStation 3, demonstrated by a further video sent to Kotaku by PixelButts that shows the game booting up from the PS3’s cross media bar.
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Epic Games revealed to Kotaku that the build is real. “This footage is a byproduct of Epic’s internal Unreal Engine 3 testing process, which utilized both Gears and Unreal Tournament, and was never part of any actual product work for PlayStation 3,” said a representative from the developer.
The build was acquired via a data breach of Epic back in 2011.While there have previously been videos of Gears of War 3 running on a PS3, those were apparently created by hackers developing their own port using the files from the hack. PixelButt’s video differs as this is actually a PS3 build created by Epic itself for the Unreal Engine 3 testing process.
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Allegedly, this version does not run on standard retail PS3 consoles and requires the extra RAM that can be found in the PS3 devkit. However, PixelButts adjusted the way Unreal Engine 3 loads data and managed to make the build work, albeit with performance issues.
If you’d like to get a little more up to date with Gears of War, then check out our review of the latest game in the series, Gears Tactics.
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Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer. You can follow him on Twitter.
Horror Legend Jamie Lee Curtis to Make Feature Film Directorial Debut
Jamie Lee Curtis is set to co-write and direct an eco-horror film, titled Mother Nature, as part of a new first-look deal with Blumhouse.
Deadline reports that Curtis, who is widely regarded as one of the ultimate scream queens for playing Laurie Strode in the Halloween franchise, recently signed a three-year first-look deal with Jason Blum's Blumhouse via her production company Comet Pictures.
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The first project under the deal, which is for both film and television, is the just-announced Mother Nature feature film, which is said to be a horror story "centred around climate change." Curtis will be directing the film based on a script that she is co-writing with Russell Goldman, the new Head of Film and TV Development at Comet Pictures.
"I'm 61 and my motto now is: 'If not now, when, if not me, who?' I'm excited to have a creative home to explore my own ideas and others. Jason and his team have made me feel welcome. Comet is ready to bring these stories to screen life," Curtis said in a statement accompanying the announcement.
"Jamie is a force of nature and was a real partner on Halloween. So it's both an honor and incredibly apt that she's making her first feature film as a director with Mother Nature," Blum added in a separate statement about the new project, which is being kept largely under wraps for now.
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Jamie Lee Curtis and Blumhouse had a hugely successful collaboration on the 2018 revamp of Halloween, which starred Curtis and was directed by David Gordon Green. The film had the biggest box office debut ever, for any movie in any genre, to feature a female lead character over 55 years of age. It also went on to become the highest-grossing instalment in the horror franchise, earning more than $255 million worldwide.
Curtis and the Blumhouse team are bringing two more sequels to our screens over the coming years. Halloween Kills is currently scheduled for release on October 16, 2020, while Halloween Ends is set for October 15, 2021, just under one year later. Curtis is also serving as an executive producer on both of those fearsome flicks.
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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
Embracer Group Has 69 Unannounced Games in Development
Embracer Group - which owns the likes of Volition (Saint's Row, Red Faction), Tarsier (Little Nightmares) and Experiment 101 (Biomutant) - has 118 games in development, 69 of which are currently unannounced.
The Swedish holding company (which was formerly known as THQ Nordic) revealed the news in its financial earnings report, which you can check out on the Embracer Group website.
"I genuinely believe that we have one of the industry’s most exciting pipelines of upcoming games, engaging over 3,000 game developers across the world," the report reads.
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The report mentions that, with the recent acquisition of Snowrunner developer Saber Interactive, the holding company now has 118 games in development, with 69 of those games unannounced. The holding company expects "substantial growth" in the current fiscal year, supported by upcoming releases such as Biomutant, Destroy All Humans!, Wasteland 3 and more. For more on Destroy All Humans!, check out our interview with Black Forest Games from Gamescom 2019.
The report also mentions "a host of other titles that have not yet started their marketing campaigns" and refers to the beloved franchises within in its wheelhouse that the company expects will bolster their upcoming performance, such as Saints Row, Metro and Dead Island.
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Embracer Group also dwelled on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on its wokflow. "Rapid transformations to online and social distancing workflows has in general gone smoothly and have mostly only caused minor operational interruptions," the report reads.
Closing out the report, Embracer Group revealed that it has raised 1.6 Billion Swedish Krona (approximately $166 million USD) for further acquisitions, and mentioned "several ongoing discussions" with studios, franchises and publishers in the games industry, suggesting there might be some more big names joining Embracer Group in the near future.
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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.
Reports: Call of Duty 2020 Is Called Black Ops Cold War
New reports suggest this year's Call of Duty game will be titled Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and will return to the Black Ops sub-series' historical setting.
The title was posted by Call of Duty leaker Okami on Twitter, and backed up by sources of Eurogamer. Eurogamer added that it will return to the series' roots, but didn't specify any specific events or locations – the real-life Cold War is regarded as having lasted from 1947-1991.
Whether this is a reboot of the sub-series, or a prequel to the Black Ops story - which has since headed into the future - is still unknown.
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Activision had already formally announced the expected 2020 instalment of Call of Duty, but didn't confirm which of its studios would act as the lead developer. Rumours at the time suggested Treyarch would be the lead, which feels ever-more likely, given it created the Black Ops sub-series. Sledgehammer and Raven are rumoured to be support studios on the project. Those same rumours claimed this was a Black Ops game set in the Cold War, and that it would restore a single-player campaign after Black Ops 4 dropped the feature.
The reports coincide with the recent opening of Call of Duty: Warzone's bunkers, which have also seen dataminers discovering what seems to be a model for a Cold War-era spyplane, the U-2. We'd already heard that Warzone will evolve to accommodate multiple games in the series, with Infinity Ward's Taylor Kurosaki saying the battle royale mode "will be the through-line that connects all of the different various sub-franchises of Call of Duty."
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Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News, and he was only this morning listening to excellent new Cold War-themed podcast Wind of Change, and is now hoping this game will feature Scorpions on the soundtrack. Follow him on Twitter.
Rainbow Six Siege Could Be Getting a Splinter Cell Operator
The next operator coming to Rainbow Six Siege could potentially be related to Ubisoft's Splinter Cell franchise.
Windows Central first spotted a post from Rainbow Six Siege dataminer Zer0Bytes_ on Reddit, who appears to have found a set of strings in the game's code that reveal the codenames for future Year 5 operators.
The Year 5 Season 3 Operator is referred to as "Scout - ECH (Echelon/Third Echelon)" which suggests that the next in-game agent could be a part of the top-secret NSA organization that Splinter Cell Sam Fisher was a part of.
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Some have pointed out that this doesn't line up with the Year 5 roadmap for Rainbow Six Siege, which lists the Season 3 operator as "Classified" and offers a logo for Nighthaven, a suspect in-game organization. However, Rainbow Six Siege Product Director Roy Del Valle told Windows Central in a previously unpublished interview that the logo "shouldn't be there."
"As of late, the last two weeks or something, we tweaked some things on the narrative that you'll discover, and you'll be very happy with, that does not necessarily strictly link to Nighthaven," Del Valle told Windows Central in February.
This suggests that the development team's plans for the Season 3 operator may have changed since the roadmap was circulated, which makes the Splinter Cell crossover more viable. To add fuel to the fire, Siege game designer Jean-Baptiste Halle gave an interview to Dualshockers, posted just yesterday, that appears to support the idea of operators from other Ubisoft games.
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Dualshockers asked Halle which character from other Ubisoft franchises they think would work in Siege, to which Halle responded: "There is a lot of characters in Ubisoft's portfolio that could make very interesting additions in our roster", and continued, "Just keep an eye on the next Operator additions this year and you might get some interesting new people coming into the roster." Halle added, "That's all I can say so far."
Halle's allusion to near-future Operator additions certainly suggests that one of the upcoming characters may well be related to a Ubisoft franchise, and all signs point to Splinter Cell. Of course, you still have to take this report with a big pinch of salt as nothing is confirmed just yet, but it's worthwhile knowledge for Splinter Cell fans keen to hear more about the franchise's future.
Ubisoft hasn't released a Splinter Cell game since 2013's Blacklist, but has been very much keeping the series in the public eye, with references popping up in Assassin's Creed, and Sam Fisher's appearance in Ghost Recon Wildlands. The creative director of the last two Splinter Cell games has recently returned to Ubisoft.
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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.
Bane Movie Masks Selling Out During Coronavirus Pandemic
Bane masks are selling out amidst the coronavirus pandemic.
With many Americans still required by local governments to wear face masks or coverings while out in public, one of the most popular masks being sold online is of Tom Hardy's incarnation of the DC supervillain in The Dark Knight Rises.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, both cloth and plastic Bane masks -- none of which are medically approved for pandemic protection, mind you -- have been selling out online.
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The trade claims Costume.com, BuyCostumes.com and HalloweenCostumes.com are all sold out of plastic Bane masks, while Etsy is selling over 150 variations of cloth Bane masks.
"Looking at sales figures, the adult mask had quite a sales spike in April and early May, which is unusual for this time of year," Costume.com spokesperson David DeJac told THR.
DeJac added there are still full Bane costumes available which indicates that consumers were just interested in having the mask.
For more of our COVID-19 coverage, learn about how you can help and stay safe during the pandemic, and find out about all the movies and shows delayed and affected by the production shutdown.
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DeJac added there are still full Bane costumes available which indicates that consumers were just interested in having the mask.
For more of our COVID-19 coverage, learn about how you can help and stay safe during the pandemic, and find out about all the movies and shows delayed and affected by the production shutdown.
[widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=ranking-the-batman-movies&captions=true"]What The Golf Switch Review – Under Par (In A Good Way)
What the Golf, 2019's hilarious anti-golf golf game, is at its best on Switch. Everything that was good in the Apple Arcade and PC versions, which we reviewed last year, remains good here, but the additions and improvements that the Switch version brings make it the definitive What the Golf experience.
The game arrives on Nintendo's hybrid console with a new two-player "Party Mode" that wasn't included in the PC or Apple Arcade releases. This mode, which sees you and another player each picking up a Joy-Con and facing off in a series of competitive levels, is an absolute hoot. Both players are made to compete across 11 random levels, each based on levels from the campaign, to see who can get to the hole first. There's a great diversity across Party Mode's levels, with some levels feeling more like puzzles, some purely based on skill, and others that could only work in multiplayer, like when you're both controlling separate items that are tethered to each other or trying to goad the other into tipping over a tower of boxes that the pin is sitting atop. There are lots of levels here, and I still saw new ones pop up after playing for several hours.
In keeping with What the Golf's style, very few of Party Mode's levels really feel like golf, which is part of the fun. After you've played through 11 stages, you and your opponent compete in one final competitive arena-based game, and the number of lives each of you has depends on how well you did in previous rounds. There are only three types of final competition, but they're all fun, particularly the combat-based game where you fling around in an office chair, trying to pick up and fire explosive beach balls at your opponent. Your victory depends on how you perform in this final game, and how many lives you have--if you won seven of the previous rounds, you can take up to six hits in the final competition, whereas your opponent can only survive three. A full round of games in Party Mode rarely takes more than 10 minutes, and you only ever need the analog stick and the A button. These are less mini-games, more micro-games, often lasting just a few wild, hilarious seconds.
Continue Reading at GameSpotWhat The Golf Switch Review – Under Par (In A Good Way)
What the Golf, 2019's hilarious anti-golf golf game, is at its best on Switch. Everything that was good in the Apple Arcade and PC versions, which we reviewed last year, remains good here, but the additions and improvements that the Switch version brings make it the definitive What the Golf experience.
The game arrives on Nintendo's hybrid console with a new two-player "Party Mode" that wasn't included in the PC or Apple Arcade releases. This mode, which sees you and another player each picking up a Joy-Con and facing off in a series of competitive levels, is an absolute hoot. Both players are made to compete across 11 random levels, each based on levels from the campaign, to see who can get to the hole first. There's a great diversity across Party Mode's levels, with some levels feeling more like puzzles, some purely based on skill, and others that could only work in multiplayer, like when you're both controlling separate items that are tethered to each other or trying to goad the other into tipping over a tower of boxes that the pin is sitting atop. There are lots of levels here, and I still saw new ones pop up after playing for several hours.
In keeping with What the Golf's style, very few of Party Mode's levels really feel like golf, which is part of the fun. After you've played through 11 stages, you and your opponent compete in one final competitive arena-based game, and the number of lives each of you has depends on how well you did in previous rounds. There are only three types of final competition, but they're all fun, particularly the combat-based game where you fling around in an office chair, trying to pick up and fire explosive beach balls at your opponent. Your victory depends on how you perform in this final game, and how many lives you have--if you won seven of the previous rounds, you can take up to six hits in the final competition, whereas your opponent can only survive three. A full round of games in Party Mode rarely takes more than 10 minutes, and you only ever need the analog stick and the A button. These are less mini-games, more micro-games, often lasting just a few wild, hilarious seconds.
Continue Reading at GameSpotDune: It Took a Year to Perfect the Sandworm Design for the New Movie
Director Denis Villeneuve has revealed the level of attention to detail and time spent on perfecting the look of the iconic sandworms of planet Arrakis in his upcoming screen retelling of Dune.
Villeneuve, who previously brought alien creatures to life in Arrival before tackling Blade Runner 2049, told Empire Magazine (via /Film) that he and his production team spent a year understanding how such a giant creature would operate in a desert environment in order to obtain the right look.
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“We talked about every little detail that would make such a beast possible, from the texture of the skin, to the way the mouth opens, to the system to eat its food in the sand," Villeneuve said.
He added, "It was a year of work to design and to find the perfect shape that looked prehistoric enough.”
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The sandworms literally loom large in the saga of Dune. They inhabit the deserts of the planet Arrakis, where they are integral to the production of the spice that makes Arrakis such a singularly important world.
And the spice, as any Dune fan knows, is the source of great wealth and thus power, leading to the dangerous rivalries between the story's great houses.
For more on Dune, check out our breakdown of the new stillsuits and weapons, all the official photos, get the lowdown on the prequel comic, and learn why Dune '84 director David Lynch has "zero interest" in the remake.
InXile Confirms Next-Gen RPG Will Use Unreal Engine 5
InXile Entertainment, a California-based video game developer founded by Brian Fargo, confirmed that its next project after the release of Wasteland 3 will be a new triple-A RPG developed using Unreal Engine 5.
Considering inXile is now a Microsoft first-party studio, it means the Xbox Series X will indeed have first-party games developed using Epic’s game engine.
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In response to a question from a fan on Twitter, inXile Entertainment confirmed that its next video game project will “indeed be using Unreal Engine 5 for our next project.” Studio boss Brian Fargo also confirmed on Twitter that its “next gen RPG” will use Unreal Engine 5.
Unreal Engine 5 is Epic Games’ next-gen game engine. Two major features of the engine are two technologies called Lumen and Nanite. Lumen is a universal lighting system that makes it easier for developers to create realistic lighting effects, while Nanite lets developers import movie-quality digital assets directly into their games.
In an interview with IGN Tim Sweeney said that the technology running the Lumen in the Land of Nanite tech demo was possible thanks to the SSD technology in the PS5. But Sweeney also said the same two technologies were able to run on the Xbox Series X.
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Xbox boss Phil Spencer also tweeted how “many of our [Xbox Game Studios] are using Unreal,” and mentioned Ninja Theory is using the engine for Hellblade 2.
InXile is currently developing Wasteland 3, a sequel to the isometric post-apocalyptic RPG, Wasteland 2.
In 2018 Microsoft Studios announced that it acquired InXile along with Obsidian Entertainment to join its new Xbox Game Studios stable. Other Xbox Game Studios developers include Rare, 343 Industries, Ninja Theory, and more.
Both Xbox and PlayStation are prepping to reveal more next-gen games, with Sony’s CEO confirming PS5 game reveals will happen soon. Meanwhile, Xbox is planning another 20/20 livestream focused on first-party titles, including Halo Infinite.
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Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN.