Discord announced today that it is finally adding voice chat integration to Xbox consoles.

The addition means that Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One owners will be able to talk to their friends on Discord Voice chats from their consoles, rather than having to use other devices.

In a press release, Discord notes that Xbox Insider will be able to use its voice chat feature on their consoles, starting today. The feature coming at a later date for all users. As Discord notes, the feature has been widely requested by users. Previously the company allowed Xbox owners to connect their accounts, but could only be used to display information, like Gamertags.

Discord also confirmed that Discord Voice chat on Xbox will allow users to transfer their voice call from the app (Desktop or mobile) directly onto their consoles using the Xbox mobile app. As you can see from the image below, the transfer process looks pretty straightforward.

Discord integration announcement for Xbox came roughly seven months after the company announced that it was finally allowing PS4 and PS5 owners to connect their PSN accounts to their Discord profile.

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

Assassin’s Creed players are preparing to send off some of their favorite game modes. After news that Ubisoft would be shutting down the multiplayer modes of five Assassin’s Creed titles, fans have banded together to give the games one last hurrah.

Over on the Assassin’s Creed subreddit, a user by the name FarlandsDesign has proposed a weekend of multiplayer ahead of the servers being switched off.

“Assassin's Creed Multiplayer for Brotherhood, Revelations, and III is getting shut down,” they explained. “Let's commemorate them with a well-deserved farewell!”

The plan is to play 3 games across 6 weekends, ensuring the maximum number of people log on at the same time to keep the games going.

Games of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood are planned to take place starting this weekend, 23-24 July, with another round the following weekend on 29-30 July. Sessions of an hour or more will be held at 7 PM GMT, 7 PM GMT-8 (7 PM PDT), and 7 PM GMT+7, on PC, Xbox 360, and PS3.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations will be the second game to be celebrated, with sessions occuring on the two weekends of 5-6 and 12-13 August. Like the Brotherhood sessions, these will take place at 7 PM GMT, 7 PM GMT-8 (7 PM PDT), and 7 PM GMT+7, on PC, Xbox 360, and PS3.

Finally, Assassin's Creed 3 will be played over the weekends of 19-20 and 26-27 August, at 7 PM GMT, 7 PM GMT-8 (7 PM PDT), and 7 PM GMT+7. Agian, PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 are all included.

Earlier this month, Ubisoft announced that it would shut the multiplayer and online modes for 15 games including five Assassin’s Creed titles. DLC for Assassin’s Creed III and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood will also become unplayable.

Other affected titles include Assassin’s Creed II, Assassin’s Creed Liberation, Far Cry 3, Rayman Legends, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. Although the remastered version of Assassin’s Creed III won’t be shut down, the fans have nevertheless decided to see off the original in style.

This isn’t the first time Ubisoft has shuttered its online services, the company made a similar move back in 2021 when it closed multiplayer and online modes for games including Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Rainbow Six Lockdown, Far Cry 2, and Splinter Cell Conviction.

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

Assassin’s Creed players are preparing to send off some of their favorite game modes. After news that Ubisoft would be shutting down the multiplayer modes of five Assassin’s Creed titles, fans have banded together to give the games one last hurrah.

Over on the Assassin’s Creed subreddit, a user by the name FarlandsDesign has proposed a weekend of multiplayer ahead of the servers being switched off.

“Assassin's Creed Multiplayer for Brotherhood, Revelations, and III is getting shut down,” they explained. “Let's commemorate them with a well-deserved farewell!”

The plan is to play 3 games across 6 weekends, ensuring the maximum number of people log on at the same time to keep the games going.

Games of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood are planned to take place starting this weekend, 23-24 July, with another round the following weekend on 29-30 July. Sessions of an hour or more will be held at 7 PM GMT, 7 PM GMT-8 (7 PM PDT), and 7 PM GMT+7, on PC, Xbox 360, and PS3.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations will be the second game to be celebrated, with sessions occuring on the two weekends of 5-6 and 12-13 August. Like the Brotherhood sessions, these will take place at 7 PM GMT, 7 PM GMT-8 (7 PM PDT), and 7 PM GMT+7, on PC, Xbox 360, and PS3.

Finally, Assassin's Creed 3 will be played over the weekends of 19-20 and 26-27 August, at 7 PM GMT, 7 PM GMT-8 (7 PM PDT), and 7 PM GMT+7. Agian, PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 are all included.

Earlier this month, Ubisoft announced that it would shut the multiplayer and online modes for 15 games including five Assassin’s Creed titles. DLC for Assassin’s Creed III and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood will also become unplayable.

Other affected titles include Assassin’s Creed II, Assassin’s Creed Liberation, Far Cry 3, Rayman Legends, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. Although the remastered version of Assassin’s Creed III won’t be shut down, the fans have nevertheless decided to see off the original in style.

This isn’t the first time Ubisoft has shuttered its online services, the company made a similar move back in 2021 when it closed multiplayer and online modes for games including Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Rainbow Six Lockdown, Far Cry 2, and Splinter Cell Conviction.

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

Google servers in Europe were brought down yesterday, July 19, as a result of spiking temperatures in the UK and nearby countries.

As reported by PC Gamer, cooling failure brought on by the high temperatures - which set a new UK record at 40.3°C (104.54°F) and caused the country's first red weather warning for heat - caused connectivity issues with Google servers around London, or the europe-west2-a region.

"There was a cooling related failure in one of our buildings that hosts a portion of capacity for zone europe-west2-a for region europe-west2," Google's service health page reads. A previous iteration explained that multiple cloud products were "experiencing elevated error rates, latencies, or service unavailability".

The problems began at 6:13 PM in the UK and weren't solved until 4:45 AM the following morning, though Google said only a "small set of our customers" experienced the termination and loss of virtual machines. Regardless, the company apologised and thanked customers for their patience while its team addressed the issues.

Google wasn't the only company affected, however, as Oracle was also forced to shut down its servers as a result of the high temperature.

"Following unseasonably high temperatures in the UK South (London) region, two cooler units in the data centre experienced a failure when they were required to operate above their design limits," its server status page reads. "As a result, temperatures in the data centre began to climb causing a subset of Compute infrastructure to go into protective shut down."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Hello Games has announced the 20th major free update for No Man's Sky, titled Endurance, which focuses on an overhaul for freighters, frigates, and fleets.

No Man's Sky's first major content update, Foundation, introduced freighters to the game back in 2016 - and Endurance aims to add much more to that experience in time for the game's 6th anniversary. Creator Sean Murray wrote: "We introduced the ability to own and captain freighters in our very first update, and it’s something we’ve been excited to take the opportunity to completely reinvent. Captaining a fleet to explore the unknown has always been core to that fantasy of science fiction, from Battlestar to Starfleet, and it’s a huge fan favorite."

Full patch notes are available on the No Man's Sky website, but in short Endurance will offer much more to the fantasy of commanding your own mega-ships, and fleets as a whole. Freighter bridges have been improved to offer instant warp and teleportation access, freighter bases can be built to a much larger scale, and exterior sections can be built onto freighters themselves, along with portholes and windows to view space from.

Freighters will now also be able to allow for food growth and manufacturing inside, and upgrades will allow you to analyze planets from space, without having to land on them. A new expedition titled Polestar will focus on a capital ship voyage. Alongside the freighters themselves, No Man's Sky's deep space is being, well, deepened with larger asteroid fields, black holes, nebulae, and improved atmospherics.

Endurance is yet more proof that Hello Games is very much not finished with No Man's Sky, despite having started work on an ambitious new project. Alongside those content updates, the game is also coming to Nintendo Switch this October, and a PSVR 2 version will be released alongside Sony's new headset.

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's live-action Hercules will put a "modern spin" on the Olympian tale while also retaining some essential elements from the 1997 animated classic, according to producers Joe and Anthony Russo.

Speaking to GamesRadar+ at a recent press event, the Russo brothers discussed their intentions behind creating a live-action adaptation of Hercules. Joe explained that they are approaching the tale from a "more modern" angle, but that they still plan on honoring the original story and elevating some of the humor from Disney's animated movie in a way that dials it up from zero to hero levels of laughter.

"It will certainly pay homage to the original with a more modern spin on it," Joe asserted, referring to the Herculean task that they've taken on. "What Anthony and I love about the original is how funny and subversive it is. I think we try to embrace that sense of humor in the remake."

This isn't the first time that the Russo brothers have teased their plans for the reimagined, live-action version of Hercules. They previously established expectations for the film by warning fans that it wouldn't be "a literal translation" of the animated hit, as they are keen to tell "a different story" with some new elements in the mix while also taking inspiration from the original movie.

Joe and Anthony are being joined on the project by Guy Ritchie, who is taking his place on the production podium as the director of the new Hercules movie. He previously helmed Disney's live-action Aladdin adaptation, which managed to gross over $1 billion at the box office when it was released in 2019 and became the seventh highest-grossing film worldwide that year.

First released back in 1997, Hercules was one of the latter-day entries in the so-called Disney Renaissance, with Tate Donovan carrying the torch as the titular hero who flexes his muscles at the Prometheus Academy. Danny DeVito also starred as Phil, a surly satyr who trains aspiring heroes, and James Woods as Hades, the flame-haired, fast-talking god of the Underworld.

The modernized version of Hercules is the latest in a string of live-action adaptations from Disney, joining the likes of Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and Mulan, which have all been released in recent years. The studio is also hard at work on a live-action Little Mermaid film, starring Halle Bailey as Ariel, and a remake of 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with Rachel Zegler playing the fairest one of all.

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

Thor: Love and Thunder almost gave Russell Crowe a very different role – Satan himself.

Concept artist Ken Barthelmey has revealed our first look at Russell Crowe as the biblical demon via Instagram in a new piece of concept art. He also offered up some info about how Crowe would have appeared in the Thor sequel.

“Russell Crowe was initially considered to appear as Satan in a cameo scene,” he revealed. “Eventually he played Zeus.”

Of course, Crowe looked very different in the final film, appearing as the bearded, gold-clad Roman god, Zeus. And when it came to the film's post-credit cameo appearance, it was instead another actor suiting up in a very different role.

But we can’t help wondering what could have been. After all, that concept art looks incredible.

“The task was to design a Satan close to Tim Curry's Devil from ‘Legend’ (1985); big horns, sleazy and evil. Because it was going to be a prosthetic make-up, I was asked to give him hairy human legs and feet. This is what I came up with.”

The end result is a very familiar-looking Satan with colossal horns and the unmistakable grin of the famed Aussie actor. And I can’t help thinking Russell Crowe would have absolutely smashed that. Still, what we got was an impressive turn as Zeus that suggests Crowe bagged the right role after all.

IGN’s own review called Thor: Love and Thunder “the MCU’s first romantic comedy, and it plays with those tropes in delightful ways. But while Thor and Jane’s relationship is handled well, Love and Thunder is less deft -- and a lot safer than you’d expect -- in pushing the greater MCU story forward. Christian Bale’s Gorr feels underutilized, and Tessa Thompson’s King Valkyrie takes a frustrating back seat, especially as the movie goes on. Taika Waititi’s signature humor and visual style persist from Ragnarok and are essential to buoying the movie through its cookie-cutter plot. With Hemsworth as enthusiastic an Asgardian as ever, Thor’s future with both love and thunder are bright.”

Thor: Love and Thunder stars Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, and Russel Crowe. Taika Waititi directed the film based on a script he co-wrote with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson.

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

Diablo: Immortal players can now change their class once a week thanks to the latest update from Blizzard.

Announced in a blog post, an update arriving today, July 20, will add the Class Change mechanic, letting Wizards become Barbarians, Necromancers become Monks, and so on.

Players must be level 35 before they have the option to change class - which can be done at the Shifting Flames brazier in Westmarch - but can do so as many times as they like, with one change allowed every seven days.

Doing so will also be free indefinitely, as Blizzard said it has no plans to charge players for changing class once a week or any more frequently. Players can also choose to immediately revert to their previous class if they change their mind or activate the change by mistake, but this can only be done once.

Players can also change the appearance of their character and reset their Paragon skill trees when they change to each class for the first time, and placeholder gear with a level equivalent to what was previously equipped will also be given to the player.

Class-specific cosmetics and gear will be moved to the player's inventory when they change and can therefore be used again if and when they return to that previous class. Progression systems not related to class will not be affected, meaning all Clan, Warband, and other social group affiliations will carry over to the new class.

The update also adds the Hero's Journey end-game content, Gorgothra the Claimer as a new Helliquary boss, the Adventurer's Path and Hunger Moon limited-time events, the Amber Blades cosmetic set, and a number of smaller updates and fixes.

Diablo: Immortal has faced quite severe criticism from players and critics for its microtransactions that essentially lock the best upgrades behind very expensive lootboxes. Blizzard CEO Mike Ybarra defended the system though, and it certainly made financial sense as the free game made $24 million in its first two weeks.

The issue also appeared in our 6/10 review, as IGN said: "Diablo: Immortal's monster slaying action is visceral and satisfying, and the game offers up a huge amount of gameplay for free. That said, its monetisation model and numerous restrictions sour the end game experience, and leave plenty of room for improvement."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Upcoming horror spin-off A Quiet Place: Day One is heading to theaters on March 8, 2024.

Originally announced last year, the upcoming spinoff was expected to debut later this year. Although it’s technically the third in the Quiet Place franchise, it’s not a sequel to A Quiet Place Part II. Instead, it’s an original film based on an idea by John Krasinski. Pig director Michael Sarnoski will helm the project.

Although it’s clearly tied to the rest of the Quiet Place franchise, neither Krasinski nor Emily Blunt will reprise their roles in the film. Unfortunately, the cast hasn’t yet been revealed, and neither have details about the film’s plot, although the “Day One” aspect of its title appears to suggest that this is a prequel in some way.

A Quiet Place: Day One, which was previously untitled, was originally intended to debut on September 22, 2023, with the film’s original release date revealed alongside the release date for the main series sequel, A Quiet Place Part 3. But Paramount's latest reshuffle reveals that it will be released in 2024, alongside a number of other schedule changes.

The studio’s upcoming film IF, directed by John Krasinski, has been pushed to May 24, 2024, after setting an initial release date of November 17, 2023. Additionally, The Tiger’s Apprentice has been nudged back to January 19, 2024, instead of its earlier release on December 20, 2023.

When it comes to A Quiet Place, there’s certainly a lot to look forward to, with both the spin-off and A Quiet Place Part III coming in the next couple of years.

IGN’s review of A Quiet Place Part II called it “a highly exciting and well-acted follow-up. Director John Krasinski and Co. broaden the world of A Quiet Place with a larger cast, bigger action set-pieces, and more monster scenes but thankfully, as big as the sequel goes, the film never loses sight of the emotional intimacy between the characters that made the first movie work so well.”

A Quiet Place Part III is being worked on by John Krasinski, with the script credited to Scott Beck and Jeff Nichols. Krasinski is thought to be directing the sequel, but this has not yet been confirmed.

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

Update 10/10/2022: The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has approved Blizzard Albany's 21 quality assurance workers' request to vote to unionise.

As reported by The Washington Post, The NLRB found that the QA workers can earn up to $41,995 a year if they work full time with no weeks off - while other Blizzard Albany employees earn between $56,250 and $175,050 - and therefore dismissed Activision Blizzard's claim that the QA workers fell into the same general category as the rest of its employees.

"While we respect the NLRB process, we strongly disagree that a decision that could significantly impact the future of the entire Albany-based Diablo team should be made by just a handful of employees," said Activision Blizzard spokesman Rich George.

"Given our tightly integrated operations in Albany, all of our eligible non-supervisory employees there should have a voice and be allowed to vote, not just the approximately 20 quality assurance testers picked by the union."

We are thrilled to announce that the NLRB ruled in our favor to have an election of Albany QA testers at Blizzard. With 94% committed to winning the union, we look forward to counting ballots a month from today!#1u #UnionYes

— GWA Albany (@WeAreGWAAlbany) October 19, 2022

Original Story 07/20/2022: A group of quality assurance workers at Blizzard Albany, the Activision Blizzard developer previously named Vicarious Visions (known for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 and Skylanders), are working to unionise.

As reported by The Washington Post, the group of around 20 employees has filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and asked Activision Blizzard management to voluntarily recognise the union.

Today, we announce a new union at Activision Blizzard.

QA is currently an undervalued discipline in the games and software industries. We strive to
foster work environments where we are respected and compensated for our essential role in the
development process. 1/5

— GWA Albany (@WeAreGWAAlbany) July 19, 2022

Activision Blizzard has not confirmed whether it will or not, however, but said a decision will be announced formally and publicly to the NLRB. A spokesperson told The Washington Post that "we deeply respect the rights of all employees under the law to make their own decisions about whether or not to join a union."

The efforts of quality assurance workers at Raven Software - who formed Activision Blizzard's first union in January - encouraged the employees of Blizzard Albany to unionise themselves, as associate test analyst Amanda Laven said "it's been very, very helpful and inspiring" to see other employees show it's possible.

"Seeing their process, it’s been demystifying to see them do it first and have an idea of how things go and how the company might respond," she added. "We’ve already gotten to see some someone do it in our own company, and they’ve been very forthcoming with us talking to us about what things are like and what problems they encountered."

The unionisation effort has been growing through the games industry, seemingly slowly but surely. Quality assurance testers working on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf for external support company Keywords Studio also officially voted to unionise in June.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.