Monthly Archives: January 2022

Killer Instinct Pro Series Arcade Is Arcade1Up’s First Full-Sized Cabinet

If your home arcade is lacking a classic fighting game cabinet, you're in luck. At-home arcade machine maker Arcade1Up has revealed its first full-sized arcade cabinet, featuring Rare's classic fighting game, Killer Instinct.

The machines tout a larger 19-inch screen, as opposed to the 17-inch display in Arcade1Up's other offerings. The machine will launch this summer, and you can take a look for yourself below.

In addition to the larger screen, Arcade1Up's Pro Series machines also have upgraded buttons and joysticks, improved speakers and speaker grills, and cosmetic features like chrome trim and light-up coin slots. The company says Killer Instinct is just the first of its planned Pro Series line.

Killer Instinct is a 1-on-1 fighting game series developed by Rare, and originally released in arcades in 1994. The original also game to SNES and Gameboy in the 90s, and it most recently came to Xbox One in 2013 alongside Microsoft Studios' 2013 reboot of the series.

This cabinet comes with the arcade versions of Killer Instinct 1 and 2, as well as three versions of Battletoads: arcade, 8-bit, and 16-bit. Plus, the cabinet supports online multiplayer with built-in Wifi.

Arcade1Up was founded just a few years ago in 2018, and the company says it has already sold nearly 3 million arcade machines. Beyond the Killer Instinct cabinet, several other cabinets are coming this year, including cabinets for Pac-Mania, Mortal Kombat, and Centipede. The company's previous offerings include a 3/4 version of the Killer Instinct cabinet, Turtles in Time, Street Fighter 2, The Simpsons, and more.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Marvel Movies Accounted for 30% of the Domestic Box Office for 2021

The MCU is still the movie industry's biggest cash cow, and last year was no exception. While 2021 was slower year in terms of box office revenue, Marvel movies still raked in the cash, accounting for nearly a third of ticket sales in North America.

In numbers reported by The Wrap, Marvel's share of the North American box office in 2021 was an astounding 30%. This includes revenue from the five Marvel movies released last year: Marvel Studios' Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, and Spider-Man: No Way Home, along with Sony's Venom: Let There Be Carnage. In 2018, MCU movies claimed 18% of the domestic box office total.

Spider-Man specifically is smashing the box office, reaching $611 million, reaching the top ten highest-grossing films ever in North America. The film is only a few million dollars away from passing Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Avengers.

Disney released Black Widow, its first new theatrical release since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, day and date on Disney Plus, which led to star Scarlett Johansson suing Disney over an alleged contract breach. Since then, all subsequent MCU movies have released exclusively in theaters. Even among COVID-19 concerns throughout the last year, the Marvel movies have still brought in a ton of profit.

The same can't be said for other theatrical releases, however. According to numbers from Box Office Mojo, 2021 as a whole brought in roughly $4.5 billion at the domestic box office. While this is significantly better than 2020's $2.1 billion, its a far cry from the last pre-pandemic year, 2019, where the box office hauled in $11.3 billion. So, while Marvel movies are certainly performing, it seems other, lower-profile releases aren't faring the storm nearly as well.

Regardless if you're happy about Marvel's runaway success, or concerned for the health of the rest of the movie industry, the Marvel train isn't slowing down anytime soon. 2022 looks to be a big year for MCU sequels, with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever all due out this year. For more, check out what to expect from Marvel in 2022.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Marvel Movies Accounted for 30% of the Domestic Box Office for 2021

The MCU is still the movie industry's biggest cash cow, and last year was no exception. While 2021 was slower year in terms of box office revenue, Marvel movies still raked in the cash, accounting for nearly a third of ticket sales in North America.

In numbers reported by The Wrap, Marvel's share of the North American box office in 2021 was an astounding 30%. This includes revenue from the five Marvel movies released last year: Marvel Studios' Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, and Spider-Man: No Way Home, along with Sony's Venom: Let There Be Carnage. In 2018, MCU movies claimed 18% of the domestic box office total.

Spider-Man specifically is smashing the box office, reaching $611 million, reaching the top ten highest-grossing films ever in North America. The film is only a few million dollars away from passing Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Avengers.

Disney released Black Widow, its first new theatrical release since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, day and date on Disney Plus, which led to star Scarlett Johansson suing Disney over an alleged contract breach. Since then, all subsequent MCU movies have released exclusively in theaters. Even among COVID-19 concerns throughout the last year, the Marvel movies have still brought in a ton of profit.

The same can't be said for other theatrical releases, however. According to numbers from Box Office Mojo, 2021 as a whole brought in roughly $4.5 billion at the domestic box office. While this is significantly better than 2020's $2.1 billion, its a far cry from the last pre-pandemic year, 2019, where the box office hauled in $11.3 billion. So, while Marvel movies are certainly performing, it seems other, lower-profile releases aren't faring the storm nearly as well.

Regardless if you're happy about Marvel's runaway success, or concerned for the health of the rest of the movie industry, the Marvel train isn't slowing down anytime soon. 2022 looks to be a big year for MCU sequels, with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever all due out this year. For more, check out what to expect from Marvel in 2022.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Every New Graphics Card Announced at CES 2022

CES is the largest consumer tech trade show. With many companies across the industry attending to announce new products or concepts, new GPUs are among one of the most anticipated things people hope to see during the event.

With AMD and Nvidia both announcing the next iterations in its Radeon RX 6000 and GeForce RTX 30 series, respectively, and Intel soon to enter the GPU battle, here's a roundup of every graphics card announced at CES 2022.

AMD

The main attraction from AMD in terms of GPUs is its new entry-level GPU, the Radeon RX 6500 XT graphics card, which will release on January 19. AMD prices the GPU at $199, but with an ongoing chip shortage and a previous track record of third-party GPU makers such as MSI increasing the street price, these GPUs may be hard to find and more expensive than what its debut price is slated.

The Radeon RX 6500 XT, like others in the RX 6000 series, features RDNA 2 graphical architecture, and the lower-end GPU model aims to run the latest titles at 1080p on the highest settings.

AMD claims that when stacked up against its own RX 570 and Nvidia's aging GTX 1650, the RX 6500 XT will deliver up to 1.6 times the performance on the highest 1080p settings in newer titles, though performance is unknown when stacked up against the re-released RTX 2060 or even Nvidia's lower-end GPUs in the RTX 30 series.

AMD also announced the RX 6400, though based on the specs, it appears this GPU will be aimed more as a GPU for OEMs.

Intel

Intel is planning to take on AMD and Nvidia in the GPU market this year, with its first generation of Arc series GPUs codenamed Alchemist slated to release sometime early this year. While Intel did not unveil firm specifications nor imagery, let alone a release date for the Arc Alchemist GPUs outside of Q1 2022, Intel provided some new information on Xe Super Sampling Tech (XeSS), which is announced last August when it confirmed it was making GPUs.

XeSS is Intel's response to Nvidia's DLSS and AMD's FSR; each supersampling tech's overall goal is to provide an extra boost in either performance or resolution without your PC rigs requiring additional horsepower. XeSS, like DLSS, is AI-driven.

At CES 2022, Intel confirmed early supporters of the XeSS supersampling tech ahead of launching Intel Arc GPUs. Developers, including Ubisoft, Kojima Productions, IO Interactive, and ten additional studios, have all committed to supporting XeSS in its games. Most notably, the PC port of Death Stranding Director's Cut, which was also announced today, has been officially confirmed to be one of the first games to support Intel's XeSS tech.

Nvidia

Like AMD and Intel, Nvidia had plenty of news to share that can get some PC gamers excited for the new tech arriving down the road (provided they can get their hands on it). During its livestream, the GPU giant announced that it was making laptop GPUs of its RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti graphics cards. Starting at $1,499 (or $2,499 if you want an RTX 3080 Ti gaming laptop), Nvidia's gaming laptops arrive on February 1 and the company claims these GPUs are faster than Nvidia's aging Titan RTX desktop GPU.

Nvidia also took the time to announce its new entry-level GPU the RTX 3050, which arrives roughly a week after AMD's RX 6500 XT on January 27. Nvidia claims its new sub $300 desktop graphics card will deliver a leap in performance over the GTX 1650 and will support DLSS and hardware-accelerated ray tracing.

Towards the end of the stream, Nvidia also announced the long-rumored RTX 3090 Ti. The RTX 3090 Ti will feature 24GB of GDDR6X VRAM and 40 teraflops of GPU performance, making it roughly 11 percent faster than its non-Ti RTX 3090 variant. While no release date or price was revealed during the stream, Nvidia promises to share more information on the GPU next month.

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

Every New Graphics Card Announced at CES 2022

CES is the largest consumer tech trade show. With many companies across the industry attending to announce new products or concepts, new GPUs are among one of the most anticipated things people hope to see during the event.

With AMD and Nvidia both announcing the next iterations in its Radeon RX 6000 and GeForce RTX 30 series, respectively, and Intel soon to enter the GPU battle, here's a roundup of every graphics card announced at CES 2022.

AMD

The main attraction from AMD in terms of GPUs is its new entry-level GPU, the Radeon RX 6500 XT graphics card, which will release on January 19. AMD prices the GPU at $199, but with an ongoing chip shortage and a previous track record of third-party GPU makers such as MSI increasing the street price, these GPUs may be hard to find and more expensive than what its debut price is slated.

The Radeon RX 6500 XT, like others in the RX 6000 series, features RDNA 2 graphical architecture, and the lower-end GPU model aims to run the latest titles at 1080p on the highest settings.

AMD claims that when stacked up against its own RX 570 and Nvidia's aging GTX 1650, the RX 6500 XT will deliver up to 1.6 times the performance on the highest 1080p settings in newer titles, though performance is unknown when stacked up against the re-released RTX 2060 or even Nvidia's lower-end GPUs in the RTX 30 series.

AMD also announced the RX 6400, though based on the specs, it appears this GPU will be aimed more as a GPU for OEMs.

Intel

Intel is planning to take on AMD and Nvidia in the GPU market this year, with its first generation of Arc series GPUs codenamed Alchemist slated to release sometime early this year. While Intel did not unveil firm specifications nor imagery, let alone a release date for the Arc Alchemist GPUs outside of Q1 2022, Intel provided some new information on Xe Super Sampling Tech (XeSS), which is announced last August when it confirmed it was making GPUs.

XeSS is Intel's response to Nvidia's DLSS and AMD's FSR; each supersampling tech's overall goal is to provide an extra boost in either performance or resolution without your PC rigs requiring additional horsepower. XeSS, like DLSS, is AI-driven.

At CES 2022, Intel confirmed early supporters of the XeSS supersampling tech ahead of launching Intel Arc GPUs. Developers, including Ubisoft, Kojima Productions, IO Interactive, and ten additional studios, have all committed to supporting XeSS in its games. Most notably, the PC port of Death Stranding Director's Cut, which was also announced today, has been officially confirmed to be one of the first games to support Intel's XeSS tech.

Nvidia

Like AMD and Intel, Nvidia had plenty of news to share that can get some PC gamers excited for the new tech arriving down the road (provided they can get their hands on it). During its livestream, the GPU giant announced that it was making laptop GPUs of its RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti graphics cards. Starting at $1,499 (or $2,499 if you want an RTX 3080 Ti gaming laptop), Nvidia's gaming laptops arrive on February 1 and the company claims these GPUs are faster than Nvidia's aging Titan RTX desktop GPU.

Nvidia also took the time to announce its new entry-level GPU the RTX 3050, which arrives roughly a week after AMD's RX 6500 XT on January 27. Nvidia claims its new sub $300 desktop graphics card will deliver a leap in performance over the GTX 1650 and will support DLSS and hardware-accelerated ray tracing.

Towards the end of the stream, Nvidia also announced the long-rumored RTX 3090 Ti. The RTX 3090 Ti will feature 24GB of GDDR6X VRAM and 40 teraflops of GPU performance, making it roughly 11 percent faster than its non-Ti RTX 3090 variant. While no release date or price was revealed during the stream, Nvidia promises to share more information on the GPU next month.

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

Hyrule Warriors Devs Reveal the Hardest Part of Breath of the Wild to Capture

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was a groundbreaking game for many reasons, but one feature that may go unnoticed by many players is the green, blowing grass that sweeps across Hyrule. Well, it turns out that same grass caused a lot of problems for the developers of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity.

Age of Calamity is a Musou-style spinoff of Breath of the Wild, developed by Koei Tecmo. The game launched in late 2020, and it tells a story of what happened in Hyrule 100 years before the events of Breath of the Wild.

Because the spinoff takes place in the same world as Breath of the Wild, Koei Tecmo had to recreate many of the same locations, including Hyrule Field.

In an interview with the Japanese gaming magazine Nintendo Dream (translated by Nintendo Everything), some of the lead developers on Age of Calamity say creating the grass in Hyrule Field took hundreds of employees over half of the development time of the game.

"That grass took ages," Art Director Yuu Oohoshi said. "It took about half of development time to finishing touching up the grass in the game. We really struggled to recreate the atmosphere of Hyrule Field."

Oohoshi says the team wanted to focus on the Hyrule Field because the mission was at the beginning of the game, and Koei Tecmo wanted to stun players. The developers even had to ask Nintendo's Zelda dev team for assistance.

"We asked the Zelda team at Nintendo how they made the grass in Breath of the Wild, and even though they shared everything down to the finer details of their methods, there was still uncertainty about whether we could reproduce it," Development Producer Masaki Furusawa said. "The game has a lot of grass, so we also considered if there were other methods available to us."

The grass remained an ongoing problem for the Age of Calamity developers, who say the grass talks continued throughout the entirety of production.

"The whole company got dragged into the grass mess, didn’t they?" Game Director Ryouta Matsushita said. "It’s no exaggeration to say we were in talks with development staff, CG departments, background and technical support the whole time."

Well, all the hard work seems to have paid off, as we said the game has a "clever adaptation of Breath of the Wild’s vision of Hyrule" in our Age of Calamity review. Recently, Koei Tecmo finished the second wave of DLC for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, which includes new stages and a further expanded roster.

As for when you can expect to romp around Hyrule's grass once again, the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is scheduled to come out sometime this year. You can learn more in our Nintendo 2022 preview.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Hyrule Warriors Devs Reveal the Hardest Part of Breath of the Wild to Capture

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was a groundbreaking game for many reasons, but one feature that may go unnoticed by many players is the green, blowing grass that sweeps across Hyrule. Well, it turns out that same grass caused a lot of problems for the developers of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity.

Age of Calamity is a Musou-style spinoff of Breath of the Wild, developed by Koei Tecmo. The game launched in late 2020, and it tells a story of what happened in Hyrule 100 years before the events of Breath of the Wild.

Because the spinoff takes place in the same world as Breath of the Wild, Koei Tecmo had to recreate many of the same locations, including Hyrule Field.

In an interview with the Japanese gaming magazine Nintendo Dream (translated by Nintendo Everything), some of the lead developers on Age of Calamity say creating the grass in Hyrule Field took hundreds of employees over half of the development time of the game.

"That grass took ages," Art Director Yuu Oohoshi said. "It took about half of development time to finishing touching up the grass in the game. We really struggled to recreate the atmosphere of Hyrule Field."

Oohoshi says the team wanted to focus on the Hyrule Field because the mission was at the beginning of the game, and Koei Tecmo wanted to stun players. The developers even had to ask Nintendo's Zelda dev team for assistance.

"We asked the Zelda team at Nintendo how they made the grass in Breath of the Wild, and even though they shared everything down to the finer details of their methods, there was still uncertainty about whether we could reproduce it," Development Producer Masaki Furusawa said. "The game has a lot of grass, so we also considered if there were other methods available to us."

The grass remained an ongoing problem for the Age of Calamity developers, who say the grass talks continued throughout the entirety of production.

"The whole company got dragged into the grass mess, didn’t they?" Game Director Ryouta Matsushita said. "It’s no exaggeration to say we were in talks with development staff, CG departments, background and technical support the whole time."

Well, all the hard work seems to have paid off, as we said the game has a "clever adaptation of Breath of the Wild’s vision of Hyrule" in our Age of Calamity review. Recently, Koei Tecmo finished the second wave of DLC for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, which includes new stages and a further expanded roster.

As for when you can expect to romp around Hyrule's grass once again, the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is scheduled to come out sometime this year. You can learn more in our Nintendo 2022 preview.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

The New Dell XPS 13 Plus Looks Like a Laptop From Oblivion – CES 2022

The new Dell XPS 13 is the most futuristic-looking and beautiful Ultrabook we’ve ever seen at CES 2022 so far.

The most noticeable thing about the Dell XPS 13 Plus is that it seemingly has no touchpad as it blends in with the rest of the palm rest. While the keyboard also sits perfectly flush with the rest of the laptop’s lower half. Even the top row of capacitive function keys remains hidden until you press the function button.

The new Dell XPS 13 Plus looks like something straight out of the movie Oblivion between all of that and the laptop's stark white paint scheme.

Now you might think that using an invisible touchpad that feels indistinguishable from the rest of the glass palm rest would be terrible, but you quickly figure out where the edge of your pointing device is.

The laptop's other concealed elements work better than you would think too. Using the capacitive touch row feels responsive, plus the fact that they only work as a fixed set of functions and require you to hold down a key to activate them means it won't be as cumbersome as the touch bar on older MacBook Pro models. Meanwhile, I appreciate the lattice-free, edge-to-edge keyboard as you get bigger keys, and though key travel is limited to just 1mm, you get a satisfying click.

But it’s not just looks that make the Dell XPS 13 Plus so impressive. Intel’s new 12th Generation processors power this stylish machine, and they’re even 28W chips, which should be faster and ready to handle more strenuous tasks. The new processor is also paired with DDR5 memory and up to 2TB of SSD storage space.

The virtually bezel-free 13.4-inch screen is the other big treat of this Ultrabook, and there are options to add a bright 4K display or a vibrant 3.5K OLED panel.

The Dell XPS 13 Plus is currently slated for a Spring 2022 release date and is priced to start at $1,199.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Kevin Lee is IGN's SEO Updates Editor. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.

The New Dell XPS 13 Plus Looks Like a Laptop From Oblivion – CES 2022

The new Dell XPS 13 is the most futuristic-looking and beautiful Ultrabook we’ve ever seen at CES 2022 so far.

The most noticeable thing about the Dell XPS 13 Plus is that it seemingly has no touchpad as it blends in with the rest of the palm rest. While the keyboard also sits perfectly flush with the rest of the laptop’s lower half. Even the top row of capacitive function keys remains hidden until you press the function button.

The new Dell XPS 13 Plus looks like something straight out of the movie Oblivion between all of that and the laptop's stark white paint scheme.

Now you might think that using an invisible touchpad that feels indistinguishable from the rest of the glass palm rest would be terrible, but you quickly figure out where the edge of your pointing device is.

The laptop's other concealed elements work better than you would think too. Using the capacitive touch row feels responsive, plus the fact that they only work as a fixed set of functions and require you to hold down a key to activate them means it won't be as cumbersome as the touch bar on older MacBook Pro models. Meanwhile, I appreciate the lattice-free, edge-to-edge keyboard as you get bigger keys, and though key travel is limited to just 1mm, you get a satisfying click.

But it’s not just looks that make the Dell XPS 13 Plus so impressive. Intel’s new 12th Generation processors power this stylish machine, and they’re even 28W chips, which should be faster and ready to handle more strenuous tasks. The new processor is also paired with DDR5 memory and up to 2TB of SSD storage space.

The virtually bezel-free 13.4-inch screen is the other big treat of this Ultrabook, and there are options to add a bright 4K display or a vibrant 3.5K OLED panel.

The Dell XPS 13 Plus is currently slated for a Spring 2022 release date and is priced to start at $1,199.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Kevin Lee is IGN's SEO Updates Editor. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.

Halo Infinite Multiplayer Event Returns Today, With Updated Progression

Halo Infinite multiplayer's Fracture: Tenrai event returns today, so Spartans once again have a chance to earn the samurai-themed Yoroi Armor Core and its many add-ons. Following player feedback, the event looks a little different this time, as developer 343 Industries has addressed some of the early criticisms with more progression changes.

On Halo Waypoint, 343 detailed the event's new adjustments. The event is still designed to be completed throughout Season 1, rather than all at once, but players can now earn 10 rewards per week whereas before rewards capped out at 7.

And the biggest change is the event now guarantees that players always have at least one event-specific challenge in their challenge rotation, opposed to the event's first run-through, where there was no such guarantee.

When the event originally appeared in November, players had issues with Fracture: Tenrai's gated progression and padded event pass, mostly over how someone could play for hours without seeing a single event-related challenge appear in your rotation.

343 also added 11 new cosmetic items to the event, replacing the XP and Challenge Boosts that were originally available in the event pass. 343 says it hopes these changes give players more reason to invest time into the event. The Fracture: Tenrai will last from today until January 11, and will keep returning periodically throughout the remainder of the season.

Battle Pass adjustments have become commonplace for Infinite's multiplayer since it dropped back in November. Most recently, 343 added a collection of new challenges for players to complete across its newly-added suite of Slayer playlists. And, while it's still not available yet, 343 has said it's still working on adding performance-based XP to reward players who have a great match.

For more on Halo Infinite, check out a recently discovered Halo Infinite mid-credits scene that wasn't included in the official release of the campaign. While fans are trying to figure out what the scene could mean for Infinite's story, the plot for the future of Halo is changing hands, as Infinite's Lead Narrative Designer just left 343 in favor of Riot Games.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.