A big portion of Marck Cerny’s tech talk today about the PlayStation 5 architecture revolved around 3D audio and its benefits to increasing realism in games. The PS5 will attempt to tune to the players’ specific audio needs to create the best soundscape, but in the future may go a step further and require players to send pictures or videos for the best audio experience. Cerny spoke at length about the benefits of 3D audio, which is audio tuned to create an immersive experience where you can hear audio directionally. Meaning sounds coming from behind you feel like it’s really coming from that direction. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=ps5-specs-reveal-presentation&captions=true"] Currently, the function works best with headphones and Cerny called headphone audio on the PS5 “the gold standard.” But Sony is also working on perfecting virtual surround sound where the audio comes from two, front-facing speakers will mimic surround-sound audio so long as players are sitting in a sweet spot. There is currently work in expanding the scope of that sweet spot. Another potential hiccup is a person’s unique HRTF or Head-related Transfer Function. This is how a person’s ear receives a sound from a point in space and is unique to individuals, though there is a common level for most people. Using headphones, Cerny says the realism provided by 3D audio on the PS5 is great, and at one point thought the sounds he heard from the game were coming from the real-world. At launch, the PS5 will come with five HRTF options that players can pick from which will provide the best 3D audio experience. But some people are outliers and for them, Cerny says PS5 3D audio sounds only slightly better than standard surround sound. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/03/18/ps5-deep-dive-reveal"] To cater to these folks, Cerny suggested that years down the line Sony may try and create custom HRTF for users using some pretty unorthodox methods. “Maybe you’ll be sending us a photo of your ear and we’ll choose a neural network to pick the closest HRTF to pick from our library,” Cerny suggested. “Maybe you’ll be sending us a video of your ear and your head and we’ll make a 3D model of them and synthesize the HRTF. Maybe you’ll play an audio game to tune your HRTF. We’ll be subtly changing it as you play and home in on the HRTF that gives you the highest score, meaning it matches you the best.” [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=9-sequels-that-would-make-ps5-a-force-to-reckon-with&captions=true"] 3D audio for the PS5 is being powered by a custom system known as the Tempest Engine and the way Cerny spoke about the feature today, makes it clear that this is a big feature for PS5 games in its pursuit for added realism. We will of course reserve judgment until we get hands-on with PS5 games utilizing 3D audio. For more about today’s PS5 architecture reveal, check out the full PS5 spec list, and a complete look at all the new PS5 details revealed during the presentation. Also, check out our updated Series X and PS5 spec comparison here. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN.

PlayStation 5 will be able to play "almost all" of the top 100 PS4 games - as ranked by total playtime - at launch. Announced by system architect Mark Cerny in a livestream today, testing of games has to be performed title-by-title because the boost PS5 provides can be simply too powerful for older code, but results have apparently been "excellent". [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=ps5-specs-reveal-presentation&captions=true"] The solution has been to allow the new PS5 chipset to switch to "legacy modes" for PS4 and PS4 Pro. It's not clear yet what those 100 games are, nor which ones haven't been able to make the jump yet. It's also not clear how many PS4 games outside of that top 100 will be available. As for when we'll see the rest, a PlayStation blog post reads: "With more than 4000 games published on PS4, we will continue the testing process and expand backwards compatibility coverage over time." You can check out everything we learned in today's lengthy livestream, and then read over the full specs for the PS5, and see why its install times won't be as long as PS4. [poilib element="accentDivider"]

During today's Road to PS5 presentation, Sony PlayStation chief architect Mark Cerny revealed some of the big changes coming to the next-gen consoles, including the switch to SSDs which among other things, will eliminate the long game installs that exist as it does today on PS4. An early portion of Cerny's PS5 tech talk revolves around the switch to SSDs, which he says will promise much faster performance on the next-gen consoles. One area in which this will become noticeable is installing new games or patches. Currently, when a PS4 game downloads a patch onto the HDD, the console will take a long time to install the patch. This is because a brand new file has to be created each time a new patch is downloaded, or else the game will add a new seek and create performance problems later on. A game with numerous patches on the PS4 will sometimes exhibit performance issues because of added Seek time, or the measure of time it takes for a computer to find a piece of data on a hard drive. "With an SSD though, no seeks. So no need to make brand-new files with the changes incorporated. Which means no installs as you know them today," Cerny revealed. With the speed Cerny is promising with the PS5 thanks to an SSD, games will load faster, developers will have more maneuverability and space to design bigger games, and thankfully, there will be fewer install times. Check out the full PS5 specs here. Developing... [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN.

Overwatch’s 32nd hero has been revealed, an omnic named Echo.

Blizzard had teased Overwatch's next hero reveal in recent days, but made things official this morning with the drop of Echo’s story trailer, which you can watch below.

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/echo-origin-story-overwatch"]

While not much else is known yet about Echo, the official trailer description describes them by saying "an evolutionary robot programmed with a rapidly adapting artificial intelligence, Echo represents the cutting edge of technology." The story trailer shows Echo as a robot made by a member of Overwatch to "help the world." One shot also shows a young Soldier 76 inviting its creator to Overwatch despite her having a hand in creating Omnics in the first place.

But this isn't even close to the first time we've seen Echo, with the Overwatch community speculating about Echo's arrival for years now – though the assumption was generally that they would be named Athena. Echo appeared in an Overwatch animated short called Reunion way back in 2018, and has technically been "in the game" the whole time as the payload on Route 66. A similar looking robot can even be seen in an extremely early piece of concept part.

Details on Echo's abilities aren't available yet, nor when they might be added (though the official YouTube channel says "Coming Soon"), but we'll be sure to update this post when we know either.

[poilib element="accentDivider"] Tom Marks is IGN's Deputy Reviews Editor and resident pie maker. You can follow him on Twitter.  

If you’ve been sitting on the fence waiting for Apple to finally update the iPad Pro, your wait is finally over. This morning the Cupertino company introduced its 2020 refresh of both the 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro. They don’t feature a new design or the iPhone 11 Pro’s Super Retina Display, but they have been tuned up with an A12Z Bionic chip that promises to be faster than most Windows-based laptops. Apple’s new tablet is also the first iPad to receive an Ultra-Wide camera—putting it on par with the iPhone 11—and studio-quality mics. Lastly, the new iPad Pro models feature a LiDAR Scanner for depth sensing and AR-powered apps. What’s far more impressive is the new iPad keyboard Apple has rolled out. Firstly, it features a trackpad for the first time, allowing you to use your tablet like a genuine macOS device. This new Magic Keyboard also allows you to elevate your iPad Pro at a more comfortable typing and working angle. The new 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $799 and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro runs for $999. Both base models come with 128GB of storage space. Of course, you have the option of picking the larger 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities as well as adding 4G LTE cellular connectivity. Of course, the iPad Pro doesn’t come with an included keyboard, so you’ll have to pony up $129 for the Smart Folio Keyboard. And if you want Apple’s new Magic Keyboard and its attached trackpad, that’ll be $299 for the 11-inch model, or $349 for the 12.9-inch one (yes, it really costs almost half as much as an 11-inch iPad Pro).

The MacBook Air is affordable again

Apple also announced a refreshed MacBook Air as its second laptop to receive the overhauled scissor switch-based Magic Keyboard. Now that the new MacBook Air has ditched that Apple’s faulty butterfly mechanism, it should be a far more reliable typing companion. Plus, you get the same 1mm of keyboard travel as the 16-inch MacBook Pro. The MacBook Air also features Intel’s latest 10nm Ice Lake Y-series processors with Intel Iris Plus Graphics, which promise to deliver 80% improved graphics performance. Best of all Apple has dropped the price of the MacBook Air to $999—$100 less than the device's initial $1,099 starting price—while also doubling the standard storage capacity to 256GB. Speaking of doubling storage, the standard $799 configuration of the Mac Mini now comes with 256GB of storage as well. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Kevin Lee is IGN's Hardware and Roundups Editor. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

PlayStation 5's full specs list has been revealed. A full spec list for the PlayStation 5 has been revealed first at Digital Foundry.

• CPU: 8x Zen 2 Cores at 3.5GHz (variable frequency)
• GPU: 10.28 TFLOPs, 36 CUs at 2.23GHz (variable frequency)
• GPU Architecture: Custom RDNA 2
• Memory/Interface: 16GB GDDR6/256-bit
• Memory Bandwidth: 448GB/s
• Internal Storage: Custom 825GB SSD
• IO Throughput: 5.5GB/s (Raw), Typical 8-9GB/s (Compressed)
• Expandable Storage: NVMe SSD Slot
• External Storage: USB HDD Support
• Optical Drive: 4K UHD Blu-ray Drive

[widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=ps5-specs-reveal-presentation&captions=true"] The biggest talking point will be the console's 10.28 teraflop GPU. Recent discussion around consoles has centred around teraflops - a measure of how many calculations the GPU can perform per second. Many will be quick to point to the drop off from Xbox Series X's 12 teraflop GPU, although system architect Mark Cerny pointed out how that doesn't tell the full story, even calling it "dangerous" to rely on that count as an indicator of performance. The pitch is that the PS5's custom RDNA 2 GPU is optimised and improved in ways beyond teraflop count, such that it will offer power beyond that expected from it. Internal storage coming in at a non-standard 825GB count points to how this is a custom solid state drive, designed to offer extremely quick load times and do away with the long patch installs familiar to PS4 owners. It can also be expanded using off-the-shelf NVMe SSD drives (inserted into a slot in the console) - however, those drives will need to physically fit the slot. You'll probably want to hold off buying one in advance to find out what Sony recommends. Make sure to check out every detail we've learned in today's PS5 showcase. You can also check out the full Xbox Series X specs here. [poilib element="accentDivider"]

Valve co-founder Gabe Newell says his company’s digital card game, Artifact, was a “giant disappointment” - but points to the educational value of failure, and its positive effect on what’s come next. Speaking to Ryan McCaffrey for IGN First, Newell explained that he prefers not to dwell too much on the company’s greatest successes, instead focusing on what it’s gotten wrong, and how to improve on that: “We're always concerned about what we need to do next, and how we're evolving, and what are the new challenges”, he explains. “We do postmortems and analysis, but it's always perspective. Like, 'OK, so how does that change stuff?' I'll spend time thinking about Artifact, and why Artifact ended up being a disappointment, and that's actually way more useful than thinking about the impact we had on the industry. One is likely to help us make better decisions in the future, and the other is less useful." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/03/18/ign-first-half-life-alyx-gabe-newell-interview"] Newell expands on that point later in the interview, while explaining the thinking behind the 16-year gap between Half-Life 2 and the upcoming Half-Life: Alyx. Newell makes clear that he sees Half-Life games as ways to “solve interesting problems” in game design, and that the company didn’t perceive those kinds of problems during that time. Instead, it chose to make new products, some of which were huge hits, and others that didn't succeed. “We can be right and we can be wrong - we make mistakes,” Newell continues. "We did Steam Machines, Artifact was a giant disappointment, we screwed things up. For us, [releasing Half-Life: Alyx] is actually a really powerful moment for us, because this is as good as we get. We want to find out, are we on the right track? We want people to come back and say, 'Oh my god, the magic still is there - the guys at Valve can take this kind of experience and build something that opens our eyes as designers, that thrills us as players, that reviewers look at and say 'no, this is legit'' And if it's not then that's also going to be super powerful and super useful for us.” [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2018/12/13/artifact-review"] Despite reviewing well, Artifact was heavily criticised for its approach to monetisation, and player counts dropped fast. Eventually, members of its development team were laid off and Valve admitted there were 'deep-rooted issues' with the game. Of course, Valve isn’t aiming for failure, but Newell makes clear that the company doesn’t bury its head in the sand when it happens: “How everybody reacts to it is going to tell us what the next generation of changes and improvements we're going to make. Unfortunately, failure is more educational than success - I'm going for a little 'not-education' this time around.” Newell doesn't dig into what exactly the company learned from Artifact's failure, but its return to an immersive, single-player game with Half-Life: Alyx is certainly a pivot from the game-as-service model Valve's favoured in recent years. We're running an IGN First on Half-Life: Alyx all month, and can tell you about the first 4 hours, how Zelda inspired its new gravity gloves, and answer your burning questions. Of course, we also have the full half-hour interview with Gabe Newell and Half-Life: Alyx developer Robin Walker, where discussion also turns to how The Matrix is a lot closer than we realise. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News, and he is also a giant disappointment. Learn from him on Twitter.

While his studio makes Half-Life: Alyx, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell has been working on something a little more future-forward - brain-computer interface research - and says “we’re way closer to The Matrix than people realise.” In an interview with Ryan McCaffrey for IGN First, Newell was asked what a typical day looks like for one of the most influential men in gaming. Newell’s answer centred on the fact that he prefers to avoid having a ‘typical day’, but said that, “the area I'm spending a lot of time on has been growing out of a bunch of research that occurred a while ago on brain-computer interfaces, and I think that's kind of long lead stuff. So that's the kind of background thread that I get pulled back into when other things aren't demanding my attention.” [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/03/18/ign-first-half-life-alyx-gabe-newell-interview"] Later in the interview, Newell returned to the idea as it pertained to the opportunities that Valve has in front of it to change the medium of gaming, as it’s trying to do with Half-Life: Alyx and VR - and he led with a bold statement: “We're way closer to The Matrix than people realise. It's not going to be The Matrix - The Matrix is a movie and it misses all the interesting technical subtleties and just how weird the post-brain computer interface world is going to be - but it's going to have a huge impact in the kinds of experiences that we can create for people.” Brain-computer interface tech - the practice of connecting the human brain to a device to allow for control of one over the other - has come a long way in recent years, with researchers now able to facilitate brain-based control over tablets. Newell didn’t make it clear exactly what his work centred on, but it’s clearly in the formative stages: “I think it's one of those things where we're going to learn a lot as we progress - there'll be some things that turn out to be ridiculously hard, and other things that'll turn out to be ridiculously easy. Like, I think connecting to people's motor cortex and visual cortex is going to be way easier than people expected. [...] Reading and writing to somebody's motor cortex is much more of a tractable problem than making people feel cold, and you never would have guessed that. I never would have guessed that until going into it. But it turns out that your brain has really good interfaces for some things, and really badly-designed, kludgy interfaces for doing other things.” [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=half-life-alyx-first-screenshots-4k&captions=true"] One thing Newell does make clear is that this isn’t aimless research - he very much sees brain-computer interface technology as a next step for gaming, not to mention other forms of entertainment: “I think that it's an extinction-level event for every entertainment form that's not thinking about this. If you're in the entertainment business and you're not thinking about this, you're going to be thinking about it a lot more in the future.” As of right now, however, Newell and his team are thinking about how to change the medium in a different way with Half-Life: Alyx - arguably VR gaming's first blockbuster project. We're running an IGN First on the game all month, and can tell you about the first 4 hours, how Zelda inspired its new gravity gloves, and answer your burning questions. Of course, we also have the full half-hour interview with Gabe Newell and Half-Life: Alyx developer Robin Walker, where they talk about far more than just Matrix tech, from how Artifact is a disappointment, but a learning experience, to why a new Half-Life took so long. [ignvideo url="https://uk.ign.com/videos/half-life-2-developers-react-to-50-minute-speedrun"] [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News, and he's ready for one of those Zion parties. Follow him on Twitter.

HTC has announced that it has partnered with Valve Software and will bundle Half-Life: Alyx with the new HTC Vive Cosmos Elite headset. This offer applies to all customers, even those who have already pre-ordered the headset. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/03/04/half-life-alyx-13-minutes-of-valve-commentary-ign-first"] The HTC Vive Cosmos Elite launches today, and is HTC’s high-end headset featuring fan cooling and the ability to pair with other accessories such as the Valve Index’s Knuckles controllers. Previously, Valve had announced that Half-Life: Alyx would be provided free for all Valve Index owners, and so this news marks HTC as the second company able to make a similar offer. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=half-life-alyx-first-screenshots-4k&captions=true"] Half-Life: Alyx launches March 23, and is the first Half-Life game from Valve since 2007’s Half-Life 2: Episode 2. It’s a full-length game built for VR, and our hands-on preview of it made it clear that it’s once again something very special. For more, check out how Zelda influenced the game’s Gravity Gloves. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer. You can follow him on Twitter. 

Shadow Man, the fan-favorite action-adventure game originally developed by Acclaim and released for N64 (and later PC, PlayStation, and Dreamcast), will be remastered and re-released sometime next year for PC (via Steam and GOG), PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. The remaster will feature 4K resolution; improved shadow mapping, per-pixel lighting, and anti-aliasing; and the restoration of content that was cut from the original game, among other enhancements. “Our goal with the remaster is to give today’s generation of gamers all the features that they expect from a modern title while preserving the qualities that made Valiant’s iconic character and the original Shadow Man game such memorable classics to begin with,” said Stephen Kick, CEO at Nightdive Studios, the outfit handling the remaster. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=shadow-man-remastered-2020-screenshots&captions=true"] Shadow Man stars you as supernatural hero Michael LeRoi in the age of Jack the Ripper, where you'll fight demons from the Deadside who are entering our world. The remaster is being powered by Nightdive's KEX engine – the same one used in the recent remasters of System Shock, Turok, and Forsaken. A new comic book series is also in the world, with Shadowman #1 set for a May 20 release. IGN gave the original Shadow Man a 9.1 out of 10 back in 1999. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.