Xbox Series X has 802GB of usable storage space in its in-built 1TB SSD, reserving almost 200GB for the operating system and essential system files. In IGN's hands-on preview of Xbox Series X, we showed off the storage space of a base Xbox Series X unit with no apps or games installed, showing the 802GB limit. This is actually an improvement on Xbox One X, which allowed for 780.9GB from its 1TB hard drive. You can check out the storage management screen in the video below: [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/09/28/xbox-series-x-hands-on-load-times-quick-resume-and-compatibility"] Game sizes are likely to be a major talking point in the coming generation, with storage costs creeping upwards throughout the lifespan of Xbox One and PS4, particularly with the advent of 4K resolutions. AAA games now require tens, and occasionally hundreds, of gigabytes of storage space – and with the increased quality of Series X games, it's a trend likely to continue. Perhaps the most notable large game right now is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. After today's Season 6 update, the full game install takes up around 192 GB on Xbox One. Assuming a similar size on Series X, you're looking at almost a quarter of the available SSD space taken up by a single game. That said, we can't fully account for how that will change on Series X, with Xbox Velocity Architecture apparently set to reduce game sizes. Xbox Series S games will also apparently come in around 30% smaller than on Xbox Series X, although the lower powered console only has a 512GB SSD. Using the (expensive) Seagate 1TB expansion drive adds 920GB of usable space to the Series X, and USB 3.1 external hard drives can also be used to store games – but the latter option means stored games won't receive the benefits of the Xbox Velocity Architecture, which should improve load times and performance. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=confirmed-xbox-series-x-games&captions=true"] Xbox Series X retails at $499 USD / £449 / $749 AUD, while Xbox Series S comes in at $299 USD / £249.99 / $499 AUD. Both Xbox Series consoles will be released on November 10. Despite Xbox preorders selling out amid widespread retailer issues, Microsoft says more Xbox Series X and S units will be available when the console launches on November 10, following "record-breaking demand". [poilib element="accentDivider"] 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.

Disney has announced that the next D23 Expo will move from its planned 2021 calendar slot to September 2022. The company shared the update via a tweet on the official D23 Twitter account. The statement confirms that the rescheduled event will now take place on Sept. 9-11, 2022, at the Anaheim Convention Center. Disney also promises that the "D23 Expo 2022 will be a celebration unlike any other" as fans will be given a first look at its "incredible plans for the 100th anniversary of The Walt Disney Company." [caption id="attachment_2413660" align="alignnone" width="1080"] Image credit: Twitter/DisneyD23[/caption] Since 2009, the bi-annual D23 Expo has invited fans to celebrate all of the magic, wonder, and adventure of Disney at a three-day convention packed full of "inside-the-magic" experiences, including exclusive sneak peeks at upcoming films, celebrity appearances, unforgettable presentations, as well as a look at what’s coming from Disney Parks and Resorts and Walt Disney Imagineering. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/08/23/d23-expo-show-floor-in-90-seconds"] Last year's D23 Expo showcased a suite of up-and-coming films from Disney's various theatrical divisions, with fans being presented with first-look previews and exciting new details about Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Black Panther 2, Eternals, Black Widow, Jungle Cruise, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Mulan, Cruella, Soul, Onward, Frozen 2, and Raya and the Last Dragon, an all-new animated film. D23 Expo 2022 will now take place shortly after Star Wars Celebration, another major Disney convention. Lucasfilm cancelled this year's event due to the ongoing novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Star Wars Celebration will now return to the Anaheim Convention Center on August 18-21, 2022. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

Edmund McMillen has revealed The Binding of Isaac: Repentance, a "mega expansion" for The Binding of Isaac, described by McMillen as "basically a sequel" In a blog post on Steam, McMillen provided an overview of the new DLC, noting that the expansion is "bigger than rebirth was to the OG flash game." The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth was a 2014 remake of 2011's The Binding of Isaac, which brought a huge amount of new content to the game, and saw it ported to current-gen systems. This comparison speaks to how much of a sizable update Repentance will bring to the game.

And of course for those wondering we still don’t have a release date yet but we think end of year is still doable ;) https://t.co/uc3TpvWpv1

— Edmund McMillen (@edmundmcmillen) September 29, 2020

McMillen added that the game is "currently over 90% done" and tweeted that a release date for Repentance hasn't been pinned down, but that the team think that "end of year is still doable," which suggests Repentance may arrive before the end of 2020 if everything goes well. More updates about Repentance will arrive in late October, with news about how Repentance will work with the console versions of the game coming soon. You can check out the Steam store page for Repentance here, which adds that there will be "130+ new items, 25+ new bosses, 2 new playable characters" and a "full alternate path with brand new chapters and a new final boss and ending." Here's our review of 2017's The Binding of Isaac Afterbirth+, which we scored a 9, noting that it "adds more to what we loved about the original." [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

The first slate of Xbox Series X previews have hit the wild, meaning reviewers are finally able to hands-on test the performance capabilities of Microsoft's next-gen console (you can read our own impressions here). There aren't any next-gen games to test just yet, but the tech experts over at Digital Foundry have put the new console to the test seeing how it runs current-gen games as compared to the Xbox One X. The results are pretty impressive: while the Xbox One X often struggled to output games at more than 30 FPS, the Series X was capable of a smooth 60 FPS – or whatever the game's framerate cap is – in almost all of the games tested. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=xbox-series-s-and-series-x-comparison-photos&captions=true"] Most of the games tested, such as Hitman in the 4K Quality Mode, Dead or Alive 6 in the 4K Graphics Mode, and Monster Hunter World in Resolution Mode ran in the 30 to 40 FPS range on Xbox One X, whereas on Series X they either maintain the 60 FPS cap, or dip very slightly below that number in the most demanding of settings. Even Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which was notorious for its rough performance on the current-gen consoles (and that's even using an 1800p rendering resolution) saw a huge uplift over the One X, hitting that 60 FPS frame cap in many places, only dropping to the low 50s during especially demanding situations, such as when there was a lot of foliage on screen. The takeaway here is that the Series X, as should be expected, offers a major uplift for in-game performance over current-gen hardware. Visually, things don't really look that much better than they did on the One X, but keep in mind these games haven't received any special optimizations for the new console yet either. Once those optimizations start to roll out, and we get a chance to actually test some next-gen games, things are sure to look even more impressive. You can check out Digital Foundry's full FPS analysis here, or check out IGN's deep dive into the Series X in the link above. Also check out IGN's Xbox Series X preorder guide for the latest up-to-date retail links. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Bo Moore is the executive editor of tech at IGN.

The world is still mourning the loss of Chadwick Boseman, who died in late August after a years-long battle with cancer. Now, his 21 Bridges co-star Sienna Miller reflects on his unconditional generosity while they worked together. In an interview with Empire, Miller explained that Boseman fought for her to receive an increased salary for her work on the film, even going so far as to giving up a portion of his own salary to help out. [ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/10/29/21-bridges-final-trailer] Miller was hesitant to join the project at first as she was exhausted at the time from working non-stop, but Boseman convinced her to take the role of Frankie Burns as he was a big fan of her work. “This was a pretty big budget film, and I know that everybody understands about the pay disparity in Hollywood, but I asked for a number that the studio wouldn't get to," Miller said. "Chadwick ended up donating some of his salary to get me to the number that I had asked for. He said that that was what I deserved to be paid.” “It was about the most astounding thing that I've experienced,” she said. “That kind of thing just doesn't happen." [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=7-milestones-for-black-superheroes-on-screen&captions=true"] Boseman's impact was felt both on and off-screen, with many of his entertainment industry peers recounting their fond memories of the late actor. Best known for portraying Black Panther in the MCU, Boseman's legacy is honored on the latest cover of Empire magazine. A 40-minute special detailing his life and career is also available to stream on Disney Plus. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matthew Adler is a Features, News, Previews, and Reviews writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @MatthewAdler and watch him stream on Twitch.

The rules of time-travel have been debated by scientists and sci-fi fans alike for years, but now a student physicist has been able to "square the numbers" to show how paradox-free time travel is theoretically possible. This means that should someone be able to time travel, the dreaded butterfly effect might not be as inevitable as has been feared -- but that doesn't mean a time-traveler might not still face unintended consequences. In a peer-reviewed paper published in Classical and Quantum Gravity, University of Queensland student, Germain Tobar, collaborating with the university's physics professor Fabio Costa, mathematically discovered how, "time travel with free will is logically possible in our universe without any paradox.” The math involved in all this is enough to make Will Hunting scratch his head but Tobar, like a different Matt Damon character, has been able to "science the shit" out of theorizing how one could travel through time without causing those pesky logical paradoxes that bedevil many a science-fiction protagonist. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/04/27/explaining-the-most-complicated-part-of-avengers-endgame"] One such example is the so-called grandfather paradox wherein, as their paper puts it, "a time traveller could kill her own grandfather and thus prevent her own birth, leading to a logical inconsistency." Or, someone going back in time to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic from happening would then nix the very reason why they ever traveled through time. Yes, it's like those arguments about time travel in Avengers: Endgame all over again! “This is a paradox – an inconsistency that often leads people to think that time travel cannot occur in our universe," Costa said. "Some physicists say it is possible, but logically it’s hard to accept because that would affect our freedom to make any arbitrary action. It would mean you can time travel, but you cannot do anything that would cause a paradox to occur.” Tobar basically said, hold my beer and went about proving that, theoretically, one can travel through time, exert free will, and not create any such logical paradoxes. Because classical dynamics and Einstein's Theory of Relativity are at odds with each other on the matter, Tobar's paper calculated how closed time-like curves (CTCs) "are not only compatible with determinism and with the local 'free choice' of operations, but also with a rich and diverse range of scenarios and dynamical processes." Or, as Popular Mechanics succinctly puts it, "as long as just two pieces of an entire scenario within a CTC are still in 'causal order' when you leave, the rest is subject to local free will." [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-best-sci-fi-movies-on-netflix&captions=true"] Tobar's calculations show how theoretically one could time-travel and exert free will in a way that wouldn't prevent the reason why they went back in time. But it could make them wish they had never time-traveled to begin with:

"In the coronavirus patient zero example, you might try and stop patient zero from becoming infected, but in doing so you would catch the virus and become patient zero, or someone else would. No matter what you did, the salient events would just recalibrate around you. Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will always adjust themselves, to avoid any inconsistency."

In the words of those venerable time travel experts Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted "Theodore" Logan: bogus! For more science coverage, learn about the possibility of life on Venus, evidence of a parallel universe where time runs backward, why the moon is rusting, and the discovery of underground lakes on Mars.

It seems like every time you turn around someone is breaking another record on Twitch. Now, the record for the longest continuous stream has been eclipsed at over 1,000 hours straight. As reported by Dexerto, Twitch streamer GPHustla has been streaming non-stop since August (and he's not done yet). What began as a simple 24-hour marathon quickly grew to 30-hours and beyond. Soon after, GPHustla began sleeping during his streams, and even running daily errands like going to the grocery store to pick up essentials all while keeping the camera rolling. Now, he's aiming to become Twitch's first 24/7 streamer. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/07/20/the-twitch-streamer-whos-reinventing-the-platform"] The previous record was held by Reecesy since May where he streamed continuously for 200 hours. GPHustla has since shattered that record and doesn't want to stop anytime soon. He wants to break the officially recognized Guinness World Record of 161 hours beginning January 1, 2021 and plans to stream until that point. “I’m so excited every day. I kinda don’t want to stop,” GPHustla said. “I want to live on Twitch now and be the streamer that’s live on Twitch. You can, any time of the day, stop by GPHustla’s channel and he will be live.” GPHustla streams a variety of games, from Fall Guys to Madden NFL 21, but also dabbles in Just Chatting sessions and watch parties with his community. As long as he's live, that's all that matters. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matthew Adler is a Features, News, Previews, and Reviews writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @MatthewAdler and watch him stream on Twitch.

As the COVID-19 pandemic fades in certain parts of the world, several high-profile TV shows are resuming production after a months-long hiatus. Deadline reports Amazon's Lord of the Rings prequel series has already resumed filming in New Zealand, while Netflix's live-action Cowboy Bebop series is expected to start back up on September 30. Deadline also notes Netflix's Sweet Tooth series has already been filming in New Zealand for the past two weeks. All three projects were among those granted border exemptions by the New Zealand government in July 2020. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=amazons-the-lord-of-the-rings-every-confirmed-actor&captions=true"] The Auckland-based Lord of the Rings prequel suspended production back in March 2020 due to coronavirus concerns, shortly before filming wrapped on the second episode. Amazon has yet to reveal a release date or even an official for the series, but since the show was already scheduled to go on a 4-5 month hiatus after filming concluded on the first two episodes even before the pandemic hit, the break is unlikely to impact the company's release timetable or work on the already greenlit Season 2. It's reported that showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay used the break to work on scripts for Season 2. We do at least know the setting for the prequel series. This Lord of the Rings project is set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before the events of the movies. Despite that, several familiar characters from the movies appear in the Lord of the Rings cast, including Galadriel, Elrond, and Sauron, though Hugo Weaving has made it clear he has no desire to reprise the role of Elrond. As for Cowboy Bebop, production had already shut down even before the pandemic, with star John Cho injuring his knee while filming a scene in October 2019. Production was expected to go on hiatus for 7-9 months while Cho recovered, so the pandemic may have only added a couple of extra months of delays. Executive producer Marty Adelstein previously revealed filming had begun on Episode 6 of the 10-episode first season. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2018/11/29/netflixs-cowboy-bebop-needs-to-get-these-things-right"] Netflix's Sweet Tooth is an adaptation of the popular Vertigo comic by Jeff Lemire and was first announced in May 2020. Christian Convery, Nonso Anozie, Adeel Akhtar, and Will Forte will star in the family-friendly series, with James Brolin attached to serve as the show's narrator. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

A new scientific study reveals there are several lakes beneath the surface of Mars. Roma Tre University's Elena Pettinelli led a team of researchers in this study that borrowed techniques scientists currently use to study lakes beneath Antarctic glaciers, to study similar lakes under the surface of Mars, according to a report by Independent. They used something called MARSIS, which stands for Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding, to scan the surface of the planet. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-25-best-sci-fi-movies&captions=true"] More specifically, MARSIS sends radar pulses across the planet and these pulses reach subsurface levels of Mars before bouncing back to the scientists that sent them. According to Independent, a breakthrough study in 2018 revealed that a large lake had been found beneath Mars but scientists at the time questioned whether enough data had been gathered to truly conclude that the body found was that of water. This new study by Pettinelli's team seems to solidify those earlier finding as the data gathered through MARSIS confirmed the bodies discovered were, in fact, liquid water. The team also discovered it wasn't just one large lake but a network of lakes considered "hypersaline solutions," or in other words – very salty water. It's that concentration of salt that allows the liquid to remain liquid, despite the extremely cold and otherwise freezing temperatures of Mars' South Pole, which is where the lakes were found. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=cosmos-possible-worlds-gallery&captions=true"] Considering that liquid water is a necessity for living organisms to survive, this study could help further the possibility of alien life on Mars. The research team have already plotted future work to further study Mars, its environmental makeup, and whether or not there are legitimate traces of alien life on the planet. Elsewhere in the universe, it was recently discovered there might be possible signs of life on Venus and that scientists have detected extragalactic radio signals arriving in an unexplained pattern. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

The official Treyarch Studios Twitter announced today that the official reveal for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Zombies is happening later this week. At 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Sept. 30, the official reveal of this new zombies story will go live on the official Call of Duty YouTube channel.

A new #Zombies story begins.

Watch the official reveal at 10AM PT Wednesday, Sept. 30th.https://t.co/TIBHK7LMOQ #BlackOpsColdWar pic.twitter.com/56EFrBYJ2l — Treyarch Studios (@Treyarch) September 28, 2020

Fans of the series know that Call of Duty's Zombies mode has grown far beyond the first Zombies mode that debuted in Call of Duty: World At War. What began as a wave-based zombie survival game mode grew into a separate entity with a complete story and dozens of maps. The longest-running Zombies storyline started years ago and continued through 2018's Black Ops 4. You can check out our official Black Ops 4 Zombies wiki guide for information on how that storyline came to a close so as not to spoil it here. Spoilers aside, what occurs in Black Ops 4's Zombies was considered a definitive end, and considering Treyarch's use of the word "new" in "a new #Zombies story begins," it's safe to say that Black Ops Cold War will see the beginning of a new zombie storyline for the Call of Duty series. We'll be getting the first look at that this week when the official reveal goes live. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/09/09/call-of-duty-black-ops-cold-war-multiplayer-hands-on-preview"] For now, catch up on all things Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War by checking out the reveal and the reveal trailer. Then, read up on all the multiplayer details we know including maps, gameplay, next-gen capabilities, and more. If you're looking to try the game out before it releases, read up on everything you need to know about the upcoming multiplayer betas and then read about what comes in each edition of the game up for preorder. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.