HBO Max finally has a firm release window. WarnerMedia has revealed that their streaming service will launch in the US in May 2020. HBO Max will cost a monthly subscription price of $14.99.

HBO Max will launch with approximately 10,000 hours of content, featuring a mix of original projects and a hefty lineup of library and acquired programming. Existing HBO customers will get access to HBO Max at no extra charge.

This news comes out of WarnerMedia's HBO Max presentation. Stay tuned to IGN for more news from the presentation, as WarnerMedia sheds more light on the original projects in the works for HBO Max. For now, here's everything we know that's coming to the service.

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In the company's earnings call Tuesday, EA announced that it will not release a new Battlefield game next year. This is the first time EA has broken the usual one-and-a-half to two-year cycle between Battlefield games since Battlefield: Bad Company.

Games industry analyst Daniel Ahmad of Niko Partners noted that EA confirmed it will release the next Battlefield game will ship in fiscal year 2022, which begins April 2021 and ends March 2022.

EA also confirmed that Apex Legends would be its primary focus (as far as shooter games) for 2020. EA confirmed Apex Legends had reached 70 million players, with season 3 performing better than previous seasons. EA is planning on porting Apex Legends to mobile and "other" platforms, as well as making inroads with China's video game industry and esports industry.

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WWE 2K20 feels like a transitional entry in 2K's pro wrestling series. With longtime developer Yukes splitting from 2K in August this year, Visual Concepts took over sole development of the series after the two developers previously worked on the games together. The end result is a buggy mess of a game that takes several Big Show-sized steps backwards from its predecessor. It doesn't just lower the bar, it breaks it.

The problems begin with the sheer abundance of bugs and glitches found in almost every match and menu screen in 2K20--it borders on the absurd. I've seen superstars teleport across the ring and float in midair. Oftentimes objects will violently vibrate on the spot or sink into the floor. Characters have a tendency to get trapped inside the ropes, whereby their bodies will stretch and contort in ways the human body isn't supposed to. Sometimes wrestlers are invisible in cutscenes or duplicated in matches. Other times they'll completely stop moving, forcing you to restart the match over again. If you put a custom logo on your created wrestler, the game will crash whenever you try to start the MyCareer mode--this is something I frequently experienced and also has been widely reported as an issue. It will also crash if you try to create an arena, or during loading screens for no reason at all. Commentary will suddenly become fixated on talking about attacks to the core, even if you're hitting your opponent in the head, while every online match begins with around a minute of lag that's so bad the in-ring action resembles a slideshow.

Not all of these issues are entirely new considering the series has been riddled with glitches for a number of years now. But their pervasiveness is much more frequent in 2K20, with some kind of bug appearing in near enough every match if you're unlucky enough. Obviously, your mileage will vary when it comes to technical issues like this, but with the plethora of glitches lurking in every nook and cranny of 2K20, it's a matter of when you'll be afflicted and not if. Some of these glitches are hilarious, there's no denying that, but it doesn't take long before they lose their charm--even if they do add a goofy element of entertainment to matches that are painfully dull otherwise.

This is because the actual wrestling in 2K20 is significantly worse than it has been in previous years. The only new addition to gameplay is a reworking of the controls that makes it slightly less cumbersome to perform certain actions. Beyond this, the in-ring action is still overly-reliant on a binary reversal system and plodding combat. It's an acquired taste, for sure, and it's been solid enough in the past, but 2K20 undoes all of that goodwill by removing any semblance of the series' previous competence. Targeting and hitboxes are frequently terrible, resulting in numerous whiffs between both yourself and the AI, particularly when weapons are involved. The controls are unresponsive a lot of the time, and sometimes the reversal prompt will just refuse to appear. The AI will also occasionally forget it's in a wrestling match and stand still for 10 seconds at a time, or it will continuously run into things and wind up jogging on the spot until you bother to interrupt it. Some of the animations look good, but they're mostly stitched together with missing frames that just make everything feel slightly off. There's no real flow to the combat either, or any sense of hair-raising momentum. Matches are lifeless affairs that lack any sort of excitement, falling into the category of being either mind-numbingly boring or incredibly frustrating.

In terms of game modes, this year's MyCareer puts you in the laced-up wrestling boots of platonic best friends Tre and Red. The story begins with the pair reminiscing about their wrestling careers before they're inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, charting a course from high school to the main event of WrestleMania 2029 as they try to complete a literal to-do list of WWE dreams. The writing in MyCareer falls into a lot of the same pitfalls as modern WWE shows, presenting smug, unlikeable babyfaces that continually make poor decisions and lack any sort of depth or character development. Red is the angry hothead with lines like "I'm going to give your grandmother bed sores!", while Tre is an idiot who turns everything he says into a painful joke. Wrestling is inherently corny, but the writing in 2K20 is often insufferable, and its protagonists are impossible to care about.

The writing in MyCareer falls into a lot of the same pitfalls as modern WWE, presenting smug, unlikeable babyfaces that continually make poor decisions and lack any sort of depth or character development

MyCareer is at its best when you're interacting with current WWE superstars. Samoa Joe turns in an excellent performance as one of Tre's main rivals, and there's a delightful scene with Broken Matt Hardy when you're on a journey into the underworld to find the Undertaker. While the characters we see on TV each week are confined to the realms of reality, the writers on 2K20 are able to indulge in otherworldly fantasy elements and play around with the WWE's more eccentric personas. These moments are few and far between, though, and it takes far too long before you eventually reach the WWE. The first few hours of MyCareer are spent fighting on the indies in meaningless matches where the focus is entirely on Tre and Red and the inconsequential secrets they're hiding from each other, while the final act centers on Red's boring rivalry with her old school bully. The story's overlong and just drags for the vast majority of its runtime, making it a chore to play through.

Character progression is another sticking point in MyCareer, both in regards to customizing your characters and leveling them up. Almost every item included in 2K20's substantial creation suite--including hairstyles, attires, moves, taunts, and so on--is locked. The only way to gain access to all of this content is by praying to the RNG gods that you get what you want in loot boxes, or by buying each item outright for a considerable portion of your in-game currency. Thankfully, there's no real money involved, but structuring unlocks in this way is still a needless hassle that arbitrarily restricts your ability to create the kind of character you want to create--which is only exacerbated now that you have two characters to customize.

Leveling up each character isn't much better, either. At the outset you're asked to choose from a number of wrestling archetypes, such as luchador and technician, before gaining access to a mammoth skill tree. The problem with this is that the vast majority of said skill tree is hidden until you unlock an adjacent hex, making it impossible to plan out your character's build beyond the next few upgrades. Admittedly, this would be more annoying if improving your characters wasn't as unsatisfying as it is. The attributes you unlock provide such minuscule increases in your skills that they're almost imperceptible once you're out in the ring, to the point where I would go hours without bothering to level anyone up.

The other significant mode in 2K20 is Showcase Mode, which focuses on the Four Horsewomen of the WWE: Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks, Charlotte Flair, and Bayley. It explores how the four superstars ushered in WWE's women's revolution, focusing on the most important matches of their careers thus far, from the tremendous fatal-fourway between the four competitors at NXT Takeover: Rival, Sasha, and Bayley's redefining match at NXT Takeover: Brooklyn, and culminating with the main event of this year's WrestleMania between Becky, Charlotte, and Ronda Rousey. The video packages before each match are enjoyable if you have a fondness for these characters and those early days of NXT, even if the video quality is abysmal. But the matches themselves run into the same problems as the Showcase Modes of the past. During each match you're tasked with completing myriad objectives in order to recreate what actually happened to a certain degree. This results in some matches lasting upwards of half an hour, and with no mid-mission checkpoints, losing a match either because you were pinned, the AI was pinned, or because one of the glitches caused the game to break, is incredibly disheartening.

WWE 2K's annual release schedule has felt superfluous for a number of years now. This has never been more apparent than with WWE 2K20, a game that's not only riddled with frequent technical issues, but one that's notably worse than its predecessor in almost every area--whether it's the dull and unenjoyable combat, the fact half the roster look like terrifying goblin facsimiles of themselves, or MyCareer's obnoxious and tedious story. This is the moment the WWE 2K series hit Rock Bottom.

WWE 2K20 feels like a transitional entry in 2K's pro wrestling series. With longtime developer Yukes splitting from 2K in August this year, Visual Concepts took over sole development of the series after the two developers previously worked on the games together. The end result is a buggy mess of a game that takes several Big Show-sized steps backwards from its predecessor. It doesn't just lower the bar, it breaks it.

The problems begin with the sheer abundance of bugs and glitches found in almost every match and menu screen in 2K20--it borders on the absurd. I've seen superstars teleport across the ring and float in midair. Oftentimes objects will violently vibrate on the spot or sink into the floor. Characters have a tendency to get trapped inside the ropes, whereby their bodies will stretch and contort in ways the human body isn't supposed to. Sometimes wrestlers are invisible in cutscenes or duplicated in matches. Other times they'll completely stop moving, forcing you to restart the match over again. If you put a custom logo on your created wrestler, the game will crash whenever you try to start the MyCareer mode--this is something I frequently experienced and also has been widely reported as an issue. It will also crash if you try to create an arena, or during loading screens for no reason at all. Commentary will suddenly become fixated on talking about attacks to the core, even if you're hitting your opponent in the head, while every online match begins with around a minute of lag that's so bad the in-ring action resembles a slideshow.

Not all of these issues are entirely new considering the series has been riddled with glitches for a number of years now. But their pervasiveness is much more frequent in 2K20, with some kind of bug appearing in near enough every match if you're unlucky enough. Obviously, your mileage will vary when it comes to technical issues like this, but with the plethora of glitches lurking in every nook and cranny of 2K20, it's a matter of when you'll be afflicted and not if. Some of these glitches are hilarious, there's no denying that, but it doesn't take long before they lose their charm--even if they do add a goofy element of entertainment to matches that are painfully dull otherwise.

This is because the actual wrestling in 2K20 is significantly worse than it has been in previous years. The only new addition to gameplay is a reworking of the controls that makes it slightly less cumbersome to perform certain actions. Beyond this, the in-ring action is still overly-reliant on a binary reversal system and plodding combat. It's an acquired taste, for sure, and it's been solid enough in the past, but 2K20 undoes all of that goodwill by removing any semblance of the series' previous competence. Targeting and hitboxes are frequently terrible, resulting in numerous whiffs between both yourself and the AI, particularly when weapons are involved. The controls are unresponsive a lot of the time, and sometimes the reversal prompt will just refuse to appear. The AI will also occasionally forget it's in a wrestling match and stand still for 10 seconds at a time, or it will continuously run into things and wind up jogging on the spot until you bother to interrupt it. Some of the animations look good, but they're mostly stitched together with missing frames that just make everything feel slightly off. There's no real flow to the combat either, or any sense of hair-raising momentum. Matches are lifeless affairs that lack any sort of excitement, falling into the category of being either mind-numbingly boring or incredibly frustrating.

In terms of game modes, this year's MyCareer puts you in the laced-up wrestling boots of platonic best friends Tre and Red. The story begins with the pair reminiscing about their wrestling careers before they're inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, charting a course from high school to the main event of WrestleMania 2029 as they try to complete a literal to-do list of WWE dreams. The writing in MyCareer falls into a lot of the same pitfalls as modern WWE shows, presenting smug, unlikeable babyfaces that continually make poor decisions and lack any sort of depth or character development. Red is the angry hothead with lines like "I'm going to give your grandmother bed sores!", while Tre is an idiot who turns everything he says into a painful joke. Wrestling is inherently corny, but the writing in 2K20 is often insufferable, and its protagonists are impossible to care about.

The writing in MyCareer falls into a lot of the same pitfalls as modern WWE, presenting smug, unlikeable babyfaces that continually make poor decisions and lack any sort of depth or character development

MyCareer is at its best when you're interacting with current WWE superstars. Samoa Joe turns in an excellent performance as one of Tre's main rivals, and there's a delightful scene with Broken Matt Hardy when you're on a journey into the underworld to find the Undertaker. While the characters we see on TV each week are confined to the realms of reality, the writers on 2K20 are able to indulge in otherworldly fantasy elements and play around with the WWE's more eccentric personas. These moments are few and far between, though, and it takes far too long before you eventually reach the WWE. The first few hours of MyCareer are spent fighting on the indies in meaningless matches where the focus is entirely on Tre and Red and the inconsequential secrets they're hiding from each other, while the final act centers on Red's boring rivalry with her old school bully. The story's overlong and just drags for the vast majority of its runtime, making it a chore to play through.

Character progression is another sticking point in MyCareer, both in regards to customizing your characters and leveling them up. Almost every item included in 2K20's substantial creation suite--including hairstyles, attires, moves, taunts, and so on--is locked. The only way to gain access to all of this content is by praying to the RNG gods that you get what you want in loot boxes, or by buying each item outright for a considerable portion of your in-game currency. Thankfully, there's no real money involved, but structuring unlocks in this way is still a needless hassle that arbitrarily restricts your ability to create the kind of character you want to create--which is only exacerbated now that you have two characters to customize.

Leveling up each character isn't much better, either. At the outset you're asked to choose from a number of wrestling archetypes, such as luchador and technician, before gaining access to a mammoth skill tree. The problem with this is that the vast majority of said skill tree is hidden until you unlock an adjacent hex, making it impossible to plan out your character's build beyond the next few upgrades. Admittedly, this would be more annoying if improving your characters wasn't as unsatisfying as it is. The attributes you unlock provide such minuscule increases in your skills that they're almost imperceptible once you're out in the ring, to the point where I would go hours without bothering to level anyone up.

The other significant mode in 2K20 is Showcase Mode, which focuses on the Four Horsewomen of the WWE: Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks, Charlotte Flair, and Bayley. It explores how the four superstars ushered in WWE's women's revolution, focusing on the most important matches of their careers thus far, from the tremendous fatal-fourway between the four competitors at NXT Takeover: Rival, Sasha, and Bayley's redefining match at NXT Takeover: Brooklyn, and culminating with the main event of this year's WrestleMania between Becky, Charlotte, and Ronda Rousey. The video packages before each match are enjoyable if you have a fondness for these characters and those early days of NXT, even if the video quality is abysmal. But the matches themselves run into the same problems as the Showcase Modes of the past. During each match you're tasked with completing myriad objectives in order to recreate what actually happened to a certain degree. This results in some matches lasting upwards of half an hour, and with no mid-mission checkpoints, losing a match either because you were pinned, the AI was pinned, or because one of the glitches caused the game to break, is incredibly disheartening.

WWE 2K's annual release schedule has felt superfluous for a number of years now. This has never been more apparent than with WWE 2K20, a game that's not only riddled with frequent technical issues, but one that's notably worse than its predecessor in almost every area--whether it's the dull and unenjoyable combat, the fact half the roster look like terrifying goblin facsimiles of themselves, or MyCareer's obnoxious and tedious story. This is the moment the WWE 2K series hit Rock Bottom.

EA has announced that NBA Live 20 will not ship this year after previously announcing the title would be delayed to late 2019. Now, EA is looking to retool the series for next-gen consoles before releasing NBA Live 20.

During EA’s quarterly financial earnings call for Q2 2020, EA CEO Andrew Wilson revealed that the company will not release NBA Live 20. Instead, NBA Live will be redesigned for next-gen consoles.

EA Sports released the following statement on Twitter:

“We’re excited by our progress but remain hyper ambitious – so we’re not going to release NBA Live 20 this season.” Instead, EA says it has “sights set on creating something fresh for the next generation of players and platforms. We know we need to earn our future every step of the way, so we’re taking time to get it right for our players.”

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The news that Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have exited their planned Star Wars trilogy at Lucasfilm was surprising… and yet not all that surprising. Not only had the pair recently inked a very lucrative contract with Netflix, which would seem to conflict with making three Star Wars movies in terms of the duo’s schedule, but also the execs behind our beloved galaxy far, far away have established at this point quite a history of hiring and then firing or otherwise losing directors for their films.

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Game of Thrones' planned prequel series is no longer going forward at HBO.

After a pilot for the Naomi Watts-starring series was filmed earlier this year, the network has opted not to move forward with the untitled Game of Thrones spinoff, Deadline reports. Jane Goldman, the showrunner for the pilot, is reportedly sharing the news of the lack of pickup with the cast and crew. IGN has reached out to HBO for comment.

The show, which may or may not have been called "The Longest Night," filmed its pilot in Northern Ireland over the summer. The series would have starred Naomi Watts as its lead. The Game of Thrones prequel cast also included Josh Whitehouse, Naomi Ackie, Denise Gough, Jamie Campbell Bower, Sheila Atim, Ivanno Jeremiah, Georgie Henley, Alex Sharp, and Toby Regbo. The pilot was directed by S.J. Clarkson.

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Sony has announced that it will be shutting down its PlayStation Vue TV streaming service on January 30, 2020. The company cites a hugely competitive field and a desire to focus on its core games business as reasons why it’s pulling out of the TV streaming business.

“Today we are announcing that we will shut down the PlayStation Vue service on January 30, 2020,” Sony Interactive Entertainment deputy president John Kodera writes in a new blog post. “Unfortunately, the highly competitive Pay TV industry, with expensive content and network deals, has been slower to change than we expected. Because of this, we have decided to remain focused on our core gaming business.”

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The Mandalorian's latest trailer finally gave us a look at comedian Bill Burr's bounty hunter character in action, even if just for a fleeting second.

Burr's character makes an appearance around the 1:28 mark and he appears to be in some type of confrontation with an unknown enemy, all while firing two blaster pistols and wearing an automated blaster on his back.

Not much else is known about Burr's character, but Comicbook.com reported that Burr had previously appeared on The Rich Eisen Show and discussed how his role came to be and how he wasn't even really a Star Wars/sci-fi fan before accepting the role.

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The Force is...going to be plenty busy this fall, as in addition to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and The Mandalorian, Respawn's Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order will be coming to our galaxy with a brand new adventure.

EA and Respawn have debuted the launch trailer for Jedi: Fallen Order, which you can watch above, teasing Cal Ketsis' intense adventure that awaits players this November. The trailer teases the story we know so far — that after Order 66 Jedi are being hunted down while Cal attempts to find something the Empire also desperately wants — as well as some of the epic-looking fights to come.

Though EA and Respawn have remained relatively tight-lipped about Jedi: Fallen Order, we recently got to go hands-on with hours of the adventure and came away impressed by Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order's scope, combat, and world-building. You can also check out all the new details we learned from our Jedi: Fallen Order preview.

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