Valve announced that it will be shipping out more Steam Deck handheld devices in Q3 as the company’s production has increased.

“Hello! Some great news on the production front. We just sent the last batch of Q2 emails, and we’ll start sending Q3 reservation emails on the 30th,” Valve explains in a tweet. “Production has picked up, and after today we'll be shipping more than double the number of Steam Decks every week!”

Valve UX designer Lawrence Yang also clarified that Valve was sending out a certain number of Steam Deck units per week in the past. However, starting this week, Valve will start shipping twice that amount.

Hello! Some great news on the production front. We just sent the last batch of Q2 emails, and we’ll start sending Q3 reservation emails on the 30th.
Production has picked up, and after today we'll be shipping more than double the number of Steam Decks every week! pic.twitter.com/kAHE0zRrV7

— Steam Deck (@OnDeck) June 27, 2022

As Steam Deck orders have slowly been being fulfilled by Valve, the company sent out several software updates for it, including adding a lock screen and window switching capabilities. Valve has also delayed the Steam Deck’s docking station accessory but fortunately, this didn’t impact the manufacturing schedule of the device itself.

In our Steam Deck review, we said, “When the Steam Deck is living up to its promises, it's absolutely incredible. Playing GTA 5, God of War, and other modern games on the go is an absolute joy, and the hardware and controls feel good to hold even though it’s a big chubby boy of a handheld.”

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey

Nearly 15 years after first acquiring the rights to the elusive Miracleman/Marvelman franchise, Marvel Comics is finally poised to continue one of the great, unfinished superhero sagas.

Beginning in October 2022, Marvel will kick off a new limited series called Miracleman by Gaiman & Buckingham: The Silver Age. This series will collect the entire storyline from writer Neil Gaiman (The Sandman) and artist Mark Buckingham (Fables), only two issues of which were ever completed and released before original publisher Eclipse fell into bankruptcy in 1994.

"We're back! And after thirty years away it is both thrilling and terrifying,” Buckingham said in Marvel's press release. “Neil and I have had these stories in our heads since 1989 so it is amazing to finally be on the verge of sharing them with our readers.

Buckingham continued, "I have pushed myself to my limit to craft something special for these issues. Cinematic in approach, clean and elegant, drawing on the best of my own style but also paying homage to the exceptional talents of all who came before us, whose unique visions have shaped this ground-breaking series over forty years, and the 1950's Marvelman foundations on which it was built.”

Marvel will also release a standalone issue called Miracleman #0, featuring several new, short stories from creators like Jason Aaron, Mike Carey, Ty Templeton and Ryan Stegman. Issue #0 will also feature a new Silver Age prelude story from Gaiman and Buckingham.

Miracleman is a dark, mature readers-focused reboot of creator Mick Anglo's 1950's-era Marvelman comics. The series was originally spearheaded by a young Alan Moore, who wrote the first 16 issues before Gaiman and Buckingham took over with Miracleman #17. The new creative team completed the first of three planned story arcs, called "The Golden Age," with "The Silver Age" and "The Dark Age" stuck in limbo ever since Eclipse's bankruptcy.

Following a prolonged legal battle, Marvel finally purchased the Marvelman franchise in 2009, promising both reprints of existing material and brand new stories. However, there's been very little new Marvelman content in the years since. Marvel has mainly focused on reprinting the early Silver Age Marvelman stories and Moore's work, while occasionally teasing the prospect of Marvelman joining the Marvel Universe.

Marvel did eventually release Miracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham: The Golden Age, and got as far as soliciting Miracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham: The Silver Age back in 2016. However, the series was quietly canceled, and Buckingham later revealed he's been redrawing his earlier work in addition to the issues that were never completed in the '90s.

Do you think 2022 will be the year Miracleman fans finally get to read the story they've been waiting decades to see? Let us know in the comments. And be sure to check out IGN's review of Miracleman #1 and read up on the Marvel Comics mysteries that took years to be resolved.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Twitch user Ibai Llanos has broken the streaming platform's record for the most concurrent viewers.

Llanos, who streamed the official live coverage of an online content creator-based boxing event, blew past the previous record of 2.4 million concurrents and set the new milestone of 3.3 million.

Twitch celebrated the record in a tweet (below), congratulating Llanos for the Barcelona-based La Velada del Año II event, which translates to The Evening of the Year. The event included five boxing matches between YouTuber Spursito, streamer AriGameplays, singer David Bustamante, and seven other content creators.

HISTORIA

Congrats to @IbaiLlanos on setting a new Twitch record with a peak of over 3.3M concurrent views during today’s boxing and entertainment event, La Velada del Año II. pic.twitter.com/5WUKrz0FkF

— Twitch (@Twitch) June 25, 2022

Llanos commented on the stream's success in his own series of tweets, saying it wasn't just a win for himself but for the entire Spanish and Latin American community. "Thanks to all the creators and artists for coming and making history," he added.

The previous record of 2.4 million concurrent users was set by Fortnite streamer TheGrefg last year during his skin collaboration reveal with the popular Battle Royale. David “TheGrefg” Martinez took the record from Tyler Blevins, better known as Ninja, who logged 635,000 concurrent viewers in 2018.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Christian Bale has revealed that he would only return to play Batman if Christopher Nolan asked him to reprise the role.

The actor may have hung up his cape and cowl when the Dark Knight trilogy wrapped, but he hasn't completely closed the door on the idea of suiting up as Batman again. During an interview with ComicBook.com, Bale admitted that he would consider returning to play the Caped Crusader on one condition: Christopher Nolan must be in the director's chair.

Despite his willingness to reteam with the Dark Knight trilogy director, Bale confirmed that Nolan nor anyone else had ever approached him about reprising his DC role. "Nobody, nobody reaches out to me or they keep me like a mushroom, keep me in the dark and feed me s***," Bale told the outlet.

"For me, that would be a matter of Chris Nolan, if he ever decided to do it again and if he chose to come my way again, then yeah, I would consider it because that was always our pact between each other is we would just stick to it," he then added. "We said we would only ever make three. And then I said to myself, and I'd only ever make it with Chris."

Bale portrayed Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises, which capped off the trilogy in 2012. Warner Bros. later pitched a fourth Batman movie to Bale, but he decided to turn it down out of respect for Nolan who had always envisioned his story as a three-film series and nothing more.

Bale is, however, pressing forward with comic book movies as he will soon be making his MCU debut as Gorr the God Butcher in Thor: Love and Thunder, which opens in theaters on July 8. Actor Chris Hemsworth has already gushed over Bale's performance in the movie, and director Taika Waititi has claimed that he's probably the MCU's best villain yet.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Tencent Games has announced Code: To Jin Yong, an open-world martial arts game set in ancient China.

Code: To Jin Yong is being developed in Unreal Engine 5 by Lightspeed Studios (PUBG Mobile and Apex Legends Mobile), the first AAA game from the studio. It will be based on the novels of legendary Chinese writer Jin Yong.

A two-minute trailer was released during Tencent's 2022 game conference (below) which shows off a fast-paced and frantic sword fight between two characters.

The combat will also feature magic of some sort, with what appears to be the protagonist wielding wind and his opponent (literally) throwing hands.

Tencent promised that Code: To Jin Yong will be a tribute to the late author, bringing to life his wuxia (martial art fiction set in ancient China) novels that are incredibly popular and have already spawned a myriad of film, TV, and game adaptations.

This will be the first modern game set in Jin Yong's universe, however, and seemingly the first to be targeted at an English-speaking audience. No indication of a release window was given by Tencent, though the trailer makes clear that this footage isn't final, and the game's platforms are also currently unclear.

The Shenzhen, China-based publisher has been pushing further and further into the games industry in recent years, acquiring developers including Riot Games and Turtle Rock Studios.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Ninja Warrior's signature obstacle course is being tested for possible inclusion in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games.

According to Deadline, Olympic athletes may soon be facing a new kind of challenge, as obstacle sports are being considered for the Modern Pentathlon. The tournament currently consists of five disciplines: fencing, swimming, laser pistol shooting, running, and equestrian show jumping, but organizers are looking to potentially replace the riding discipline.

Format owner Tokyo Broadcasting System Television (TBS) is said to be collaborating with several partners to trial the "ninja competition" that was made popular by Sasuke aka Ninja Warrior. The first test competition will be held in Ankara, Turkey on June 27, with another scheduled to take place the day after, following the 2022 Pentathlon World Cup Final.

"Sasuke/Ninja Warrior, which continues to win fans around the world, represents the culmination of TBS's long history of content development," said Miho Takashima, who manages the format globally. "We look forward to working with the UIPM [Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne] and FISO [Fédération Internationale de Sports d’Obstacles] to further expand the possibilities of obstacle racing."

Ninja Warrior started off as a Japanese sports entertainment reality TV show called Sasuke in 1997, which saw 100 competitors participating in a four-stage obstacle course. The series then expanded globally, spawning local versions in at least 18 other countries, including the United States, which adopted the format for the launch of American Ninja Warrior in 2009.

A sports video game based on the series, titled American Ninja Warrior Challenge, was released in 2009 for PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. The people that accepted the challenge and picked up the game had to compete across a series of daunting obstacle courses from the hit show to achieve Total Victory and earn American Ninja Warrior status.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Thumbnail image credit: TBS.

It's been long-rumored that Apple is working on a headset capable of offering augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality content (VR). A new report now suggests that the head-mounted display features the powerful new M2 chip and 16GB of RAM.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that the latest version of this headset is running with the M2 system on a chip and includes 16GB of RAM. This deviates from previous reports, which included a prediction from supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo that the headset would include a chip with the same computing power found in the M1 chip.

Gurman's latest reporting, like the report from The Information last month, suggests that the device will be a standalone headset, like the Meta Quest 2. The Information also noted in the same report that the device would have a multi-chip setup. However, in his new report, Gurman does not go into further detail on the mixed reality headset beyond what the current incarnation has CPU and RAM-wise.

Apple announced the M2 chip during its WWDC keynote earlier this month. Currently, only one device on the market features the latest Apple silicon — the 13-inch MacBook Pro. However, a 2022 model refresh of the MacBook Air was also announced at WWDC and is slated for release sometime next month.

Information on the mixed reality headset has trickled in throughout 2022; this includes Gurman reporting in May that Apple's board of directors had the opportunity to try out the headset. Additionally, "RealityOS," the operating system likely to be used on the headset, has appeared in a trademark application filed by the iPhone maker. At the same time, "RealityOS" has also appeared in Apple's code.

Although Apple has not formally announced the product, CEO Tim Cook last week all but confirmed the headset's existence during a recent interview with China Daily. Reports suggest that Apple may launch the headset as early as January 2023.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

This story contains spoilers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness!

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ends with a pretty dark twist, with Strange succumbing to the effects of the Darkhold by the end of the movie. But it could have been a lot worse…

During the film’s audio commentary, screenwriter Michael Waldron revealed that Doctor Strange originally suffered a much darker fate by the end of the movie. During the course of the movie, Strange visits an incursion universe in which he meets a twisted version of himself, known as Sinister Strange, who meddled with dark magic.

According to Waldron, it sounds as though Sinister Strange could have traded places with our Doctor Strange: “Strange gets trapped in that [incursion] universe,” he revealed of an alternate plan. “And then [Sinister Strange] turns around, and the third eye opens.”

If that wasn’t haunting enough, the twist would have been announced with Vincent Price’s iconic laugh – echoing the horror icon’s vocals in the Michael Jackson song, Thriller.

Unfortunately, Vincent Price’s laugh remains outside of the MCU for now. What we ended up with was Doctor Strange falling to his knees in the middle of NYC as his third eye manifests.

“That's the bill coming due," Waldron told ComicBook. "As Wong says, 'You used the Darkhold to possess your own corpse.' Surely, there must be some fallout. It was a little bit of a throwback to [director Sam Raimi's] old Evil Dead, and that groaner of an ending, or it's just like, 'Oh my God, things turned out bad in the end.' So, yeah. We'll see what all that means for Stephen.”

As it stands, we already know that someone comes looking for him. A post-credit scene introduced Doctor Strange character, Clea – played by none other than Charlize Theron. In the comic books, she’s the niece of Dormammu, the demonic entity Strange encountered in the first film.

But don’t panic – she’s actually a force for good, and the pair have often dated in the comics – even if their relationship never usually lasts very long.

Still, it looks as though we got a much more hopeful ending in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness than was originally planned. Want to read more about Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness? Check out this deleted scene between Strange and Christine Palmer, and find out what could be next for Wanda Maximoff.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange, alongside Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch. They’re joined by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, Rachel McAdams, and Xochitl Gomez.

Sam Raimi directed the movie from a script by Michael Waldron, based on characters created by comic book legends, Steve Ditko, and Stan Lee.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Death Stranding and Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima seemingly worked on a concept akin to Amazon's The Boys before putting it on hold for being too similar. Now that he's put that out there, leads on the TV show say they want the legendary developer to work on a tie-in game.

Kojima said he was "warming up" the project for a long time - with Hannibal's Mads Mikkelsen picked out as the lead in his mind - and was about to start it just as The Boys' first season was released. Sharing the concept on Twitter (below), Kojima said he stopped watching The Boys after episode three of the first season.

"I thought I'd watch the rest of the show," he said. "Actually, I watched a few episodes that were delivered at the time when I was about to start a project that I had been warming up for a long time, and put it on hold because the concept was similar (different settings and tricks).

Kojima said his concept would have included "a buddy (male/female) thing with a special detective squad facing off against legendary heroes behind the scenes. I was thinking of Mads as the lead." The Boys tells the story of a team of regular humans tasked with policing (and occasionally violently killing) superpowered individuals.

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"THE BOYS," which I quit after 3 episodes of season 1. I thought I'd watch the rest of the show. Actually, I watched a few episodes that were delivered at the time when I was about to start a project that I had been warming up for a long time, pic.twitter.com/UpI00pUIHQ

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) June 26, 2022

It's not clear whether Kojima's concept was for a game, a movie, or otherwise, but the implication seems to be that it's not currently in the works. Kojima is currently working on a cloud project for Xbox, and we've heard tell of a horror game called Overdose and a Death Stranding sequel.

The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke responded to Kojima's tweets, declaring he was a huge fan and wanted to collaborate on a video game adaptation of the series. "Please come and make a The Boys game. We can team up and conquer," he said. Antony Starr, who plays Homelander in the series, concurred, saying that he seconds that notion.

The Boys Season 3 is currently airing, and we said the latest episode was great. The series has impressed overall, as in our 9/10 review of Season 2, IGN said: "The Boys is filled with memorable characters and plenty of that stylized and irreverent drama we love."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

A Nintendo Direct Mini will be broadcast tomorrow, June 28. It will focus on third-party partners, so don't expect the likes of Mario, Zelda or other major Nintendo series to appear.

The 'Partner Showcase', which will be around 25 minutes long, will air on YouTube at 6am Pacific / 9am Eastern / 2pm UK / 11pm AEST.

A new #NintendoDirectMini: Partner Showcase is on the way! Watch on-demand via our YouTube channel beginning Tuesday, June 28 at 6am PT for roughly 25 minutes of info on upcoming third-party #NintendoSwitch games.

Subscribe & turn on notifications here: https://t.co/SZA1P3RSHS pic.twitter.com/8hmCJ1p5EX

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) June 27, 2022

Nintendo traditionally airs a major Nintendo Direct as part of E3 in June. However, with E3 cancelled in 2022, it's unclear if Nintendo is delaying its own first-party showcase, or will announce its games in more piecemeal fashion this year.

The last Nintendo broadcast was May's Indie World show, which revealed the likes of Gunbrella, a Switch release for Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, and more.

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.