MTV has added a "Best Metaverse Performance" category to the Video Music Awards, pitting the likes of Ariana Grande's performance in Fortnite against Twenty One Pilots' concert in Roblox.

As reported by The Hill, voting is now open for the metaverse category and 21 others, and MTV will announce the winners at the VMA live show on August 28.

The full list of nominees are: Ariana Grande's headlining performance at the Fortnite Rift Tour, Blackpink's concert in PUBG: Mobile, BTS's performance in Minecraft, Charli XCX's appearance in Roblox, Justin Bieber's interactive virtual experience in Wave, and Twenty One Pilots' concert in Roblox.

MTV said the increasing number of artists hosting performances digitally led them to create the new category.

"We saw the opportunity to highlight and honour some of the best, most impactful executions of this - and celebrate artists who have found creative ways to use these spaces - which led to the addition of [the] Best Metaverse Performance category this year," MTV said.

Travis Scott was one of the first artists to host a performance in this way when he played the Astronomical concert back in 2020, and the connection between music and the metaverse has only grown since.

Remaining at the forefront of the movement, Fortnite also collaborated with Coachella earlier this year to bring elements of the iconic festival into the game.

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

MTV has added a "Best Metaverse Performance" category to the Video Music Awards, pitting the likes of Ariana Grande's performance in Fortnite against Twenty One Pilots' concert in Roblox.

As reported by The Hill, voting is now open for the metaverse category and 21 others, and MTV will announce the winners at the VMA live show on August 28.

The full list of nominees are: Ariana Grande's headlining performance at the Fortnite Rift Tour, Blackpink's concert in PUBG: Mobile, BTS's performance in Minecraft, Charli XCX's appearance in Roblox, Justin Bieber's interactive virtual experience in Wave, and Twenty One Pilots' concert in Roblox.

MTV said the increasing number of artists hosting performances digitally led them to create the new category.

"We saw the opportunity to highlight and honour some of the best, most impactful executions of this - and celebrate artists who have found creative ways to use these spaces - which led to the addition of [the] Best Metaverse Performance category this year," MTV said.

Travis Scott was one of the first artists to host a performance in this way when he played the Astronomical concert back in 2020, and the connection between music and the metaverse has only grown since.

Remaining at the forefront of the movement, Fortnite also collaborated with Coachella earlier this year to bring elements of the iconic festival into the game.

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

Better Call Saul just teased the crossover we’ve all been waiting for, with the third-to-last episode of the series getting a very familiar title - 'Breaking Bad'.

According to AV Club, broadcaster AMC has confirmed that Better Call Saul’s next episode will bear the title, teasing the appearance of the original show's Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.

It’s been on the cards for a while. After all, Better Call Saul co-creator Peter Gould confirmed that we would finally see the Breaking Bad duo in the show’s final season.

“I don’t want to spoil things for the audience, but I will say the first question we had when we started the show was, ‘Are we gonna see Walt and Jesse on the show?’” he said. “Instead of evading, I’ll just say yeah.”

But is this just a clever bit of misdirection? The episode synopsis reads: “The partners escalate their enterprise to new levels.” Clearly, this is supposed to make us think that Walt and Jesse will appear in the episode. But could it just be a little cat and mouse before revealing the pair later?

However, fans have pointed out that Saul Goodman’s first appearance in Breaking Bad was similarly in an episode titled “Better Call Saul”. If Walt and Jesse do appear in the next episode, it would be a neat, rather circular, call back to Saul’s first TV appearance.

Breaking Bad has an episode called Better Call Saul, and Better Call Saul will have an episode called Breaking Bad. Exquisite.

— Chucho Salamanca (@ChuckWilbury) July 27, 2022

Interestingly, the following episode – the penultimate of the entire series – is written and directed by Breaking Bad creator, Vince Gilligan. Hopefully that's a hint that we still have a little more time with our favorite meth kingpins.

At the very least, it looks as though Better Call Saul might catch up with Walt at the height of Heisenberg’s criminal empire. After those black and white flashforwards to Gene the Cinnabon Manager, it’s about time we got a glimpse of what puts him there.

Want to read more about Better Call Saul? Check out what Better Call Saul gets right about prequels, and find out which Emmy’s the show is up for this year.

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

Better Call Saul just teased the crossover we’ve all been waiting for, with the third-to-last episode of the series getting a very familiar title - 'Breaking Bad'.

According to AV Club, broadcaster AMC has confirmed that Better Call Saul’s next episode will bear the title, teasing the appearance of the original show's Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.

It’s been on the cards for a while. After all, Better Call Saul co-creator Peter Gould confirmed that we would finally see the Breaking Bad duo in the show’s final season.

“I don’t want to spoil things for the audience, but I will say the first question we had when we started the show was, ‘Are we gonna see Walt and Jesse on the show?’” he said. “Instead of evading, I’ll just say yeah.”

But is this just a clever bit of misdirection? The episode synopsis reads: “The partners escalate their enterprise to new levels.” Clearly, this is supposed to make us think that Walt and Jesse will appear in the episode. But could it just be a little cat and mouse before revealing the pair later?

However, fans have pointed out that Saul Goodman’s first appearance in Breaking Bad was similarly in an episode titled “Better Call Saul”. If Walt and Jesse do appear in the next episode, it would be a neat, rather circular, call back to Saul’s first TV appearance.

Breaking Bad has an episode called Better Call Saul, and Better Call Saul will have an episode called Breaking Bad. Exquisite.

— Chucho Salamanca (@ChuckWilbury) July 27, 2022

Interestingly, the following episode – the penultimate of the entire series – is written and directed by Breaking Bad creator, Vince Gilligan. Hopefully that's a hint that we still have a little more time with our favorite meth kingpins.

At the very least, it looks as though Better Call Saul might catch up with Walt at the height of Heisenberg’s criminal empire. After those black and white flashforwards to Gene the Cinnabon Manager, it’s about time we got a glimpse of what puts him there.

Want to read more about Better Call Saul? Check out what Better Call Saul gets right about prequels, and find out which Emmy’s the show is up for this year.

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

Update - 09/07/2022: Sony has announced that its PlayStation 5 firmware update that includes 1440p monitor support, Gamelists, and new social features will be available globally today, September 7.

Announced in a PlayStation Blog post, Sony's vice president of platform experience Hideaki Nishino said that these highly requested features - first confirmed to be on the way in July - will finally be fully released.

The blog post also revealed that Sony is testing other new features including the ability to do a voice search for YouTube videos from anywhere on the PS5 console. It's also adding new features to the PlayStation App including the ability to launch a remote play session straight from your phone and the option to request that friends share their screens.

Original Story: Sony's PlayStation 5 is finally getting 1440p monitor support thanks to an incoming firmware update.

As announced on the PlayStation Blog, the new feature has entered beta and is therefore essentially in the final stage of testing before Sony rolls it out to all PS5 users.

The 1440p support is particularly important for PC players, who have been requesting the feature since the console was released – especially as its competitor the Xbox Series X has supported 1440p since launch.

"If the game you’re playing supports 1440p rendering you can experience native 1440p output on your display," the post said. "Or, if you’re playing a game with a higher native resolution like 4K, then you may benefit from improved anti-aliasing through supersampling down to 1440p output."

The resolution can be changed in the PS5's system settings, by proceeding to video output, resolution, and finally to 1440p.

Also coming in the beta – the features of which usually see a full release a few weeks later – is a new organisation option called Gamelists. Users will be able to sort their games into these Gamelists, essentially the folders used on the PS4, with up to 15 lists in total and 100 games in each one.

The ability to compare 3D and stereo audio is also featured, alongside easier to see in-progress activities, and new social features such as requesting party members share their screen, a pop-up to quickly join party member's games, and more.

Sony releases several firmware updates a year adding more features to its consoles, and has also recently bolstered its digital offers through the likes of the new PlayStation Plus tiers and the PlayStation Stars rewards programme.

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

The first teaser trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has been revealed, and shows the first footage of Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called “father of the atomic bomb”.

The trailer, which is currently running on a continual loop on Universal Pictures’ YouTube channel, shows very little, and is mostly a mood piece-style teaser. Snippets of dialogue can be heard playing over black-and-white footage, which shows little more than Oppenheimer putting on his hat and then walking, surrounded by photographers. Interspersed between these sequences are images depicting fission (presumably nuclear fission that occurs in the sun, based on a line dialogue spoken that claims Oppenheimer has harnessed “the force from which the sun draws its power”.) Those images are similar in colour to the fiery poster first revealed last week.

Among the other words spoken are “The world is changing, reforming, this is your moment,” and “You gave them the power to destroy themselves, you may be the most important man whoever lived.” It’s all incredibly ominous, made further uncomfortable by the escalating musical score which is, in classic Nolan fashion, unorthodox to say the least.

On screen is also a countdown, starting at 11 months, 17 days, 22 hours, and 42 minutes, which points to next year’s 78th anniversary of the first-ever launch of a nuclear weapon by the United States, on July 16, 1945. That’s just days before Oppenheimer opens in cinemas on July 21, 2023.

A similar cut of this trailer, with a longer timer, played ahead of screenings of Nope last week. The film will star Cillian Murphy as the titular scientist, as well as Robert Downey Jr., Josh Peck, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, and David Dastmalchian.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Features Editor.

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has explained why Avengers movies are now positioned to be saga cappers rather than team-up films that arrive in the concluding chapters of each MCU phase.

Speaking to MTV News at San Diego Comic-Con 2022, Feige discussed the future of the MCU and how there has been a shift in the way that they map out their projects, with Avengers movies now being placed at the end of a complete saga that comprises of multiple phases instead of being released as a culminating film of each individual phase, bearing in mind there are now more projects across fewer years.

"The truth is, when we were doing Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3, there were less projects over more years," Feige asserted, reflecting on the earlier phases of the MCU. "They were smaller projects and individual character stories, and it felt appropriate at that point, that after every two or three years that it took for a phase, we would do an 'Avengers' film."

The Infinity Saga, encompassing Phase 1, 2 and 3 of the MCU, featured four Avengers movies across seven years, with the first Avengers film being released in 2012 and the last arriving in 2019. The first three Avengers movies were released with three years between each, while Infinity War and Endgame debuted just a year apart from one another.

The next Avengers film, The Kang Dynasty, is slated for release in 2025, six years after Endgame hit theaters. Feige explained that the larger gap between Avengers films is partly due to the fact that big superhero team-up movies are now scattered throughout each MCU phase, changing the way that Avengers films factor into release schedules.

"As [Phase] 4, 5 and 6 were coming together, there are more projects in less years – because of all the amazing stuff we're now allowed to do on Disney+, and getting characters from Fox, Fantastic Four and Deadpool — that it felt like, certainly after 'Infinity War' and 'Endgame,' that we thought 'Avengers' movies aren't cappers," he said. "So many of our movies now — 'Multiverse of Madness' and what you're about to see in ['Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania'], all are big team-up films introducing big parts of the mythology… 'Avengers' films really should be the capper to a saga."

Avengers: The Kang Dynasty will be directed by Destin Daniel Cretton and will close out Phase 6 alongside Avengers: Secret Wars. The Kang Dynasty will hit the big screen on May 2, 2025, and Secret Wars will be released six months later on November 7, 2025. Phase 6 will also officially conclude the MCU's second saga, which is now known as The Multiverse Saga.

Secret Wars may well be Marvel's biggest superhero movie yet, one that can dwarf even Avengers: Endgame in scope and the sheer number of characters involved. If you're not familiar with this huge cosmic epic, then you might want to check out IGN's breakdown of everything you need to know about Secret Wars and why Phase 6 will be the biggest ever.

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

Marvel’s new Black Panther may have been revealed in some new LEGO sets.

After the recent Wakanda Forever trailer, one question was on everyone’s mind — who was teased as the new Black Panther at the end of the clip?

A trio of LEGO sets has just been unveiled, giving us a glimpse at some of the new heroes due to appear in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. And there’s one minifigure, in particular, that might give the game away.

The Shuri’s Sunbird #76211 set features three minifigures — Shuri (Letitia Wright), Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), and War Dog Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o). And it looks as though Shuri is featured wearing a version of the Black Panther suit.

This version is complete with Shuri’s signature arm blasters and a suit that resembles the one seen in the Wakanda Forever trailer… albeit with a touch more purple.

Shuri is featured heavily in the new sets, also appearing as a minifigure in King Namor’s Throne Room #76213 as well as, obviously, Shuri’s Lab #76212.

The fact that Shuri features so heavily across these sets is also a bit of a giveaway – featuring the film’s main hero across its set is a sure sign that Shuri is a leading candidate to be the new Black Panther we glimpsed in the trailer.

The sets also give us another look at Namor the Submariner, played in Wakanda Forever by Tenoch Huerta. This impressive set depicts Namor’s throne — a shark-jaw spectacle that’s reminiscent of the sarlacc Star Wars set released a few years ago.

This set also gives us a closer look at Attuma and his armor, as seen in the recent action figures.

Black Panther stars Letitia Wright, Angela Bassett, Winston Duke, Danai Gurira, Florence Kasumba, Lupita Nyong’o, Martin Freeman, Dominique Thorne, and Tenoch Huerta.

Ryan Coogler directed the film based on a script he co-wrote with Joe Robert Cole.

Want to find out more about Black Panther: Wakanda Forever? Check out how the comic books handled a Black Panther without T’Challa, as well as a look at every film and TV show involved in the Multiverse Saga.

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

Marvel’s upcoming Fantastic Four film won’t retread their origin story.

During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel boss Kevin Feige explained that the Fantastic Four film will be a story we’ve never seen before.

“A lot of people know this origin story,” he said. “A lot of people know the basics. How do we take that and bring something that they’ve never seen before?”

Of course, we’ve seen the team’s origins twice on the big screen already. Headed up by Reed Richards, a team consisting of Sue Storm, her brother Johnny, and Ben Grimm become the Fantastic Four – usually as the result of a failed space mission that exposes the crew to cosmic rays.

The 2005 Fantastic Four film saw Ioan Gruffudd take the role of Mr. Fantastic, alongside Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, and Michael Chiklis, and brought the group’s origin story to our screens.

A reboot retold their story in 2015 starring Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Jamie Bell. But while it gave us a very different twist on the group’s origins, especially when it came to the film’s villain and regular nemesis Doctor Doom, it still showcased the team’s transformations.

But now, Marvel wants to skip over this part to bring its first family back into the fold… and Feige explained that they have high expectations due to the team’s comic book pedigree.

“We’ve set a very high bar for ourselves with bringing that to the screen,” he said.

Making their comic book debut in 1961, the Fantastic Four was Marvel’s first ever superhero team.

But I can’t help thinking that assuming everyone knows their story is a bit of a stretch.

After all, it’s been 7 years since the critically panned reboot and 17 years since the original Fox version of Fantastic Four debuted in theaters. Will audiences really remember the Fantastic Four origins well enough to pull off their own Spider-Man: Homecoming?

For now, we’ll have to wait and see. But a decent retelling of the group’s origins could be exactly what fans really want to see.

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

Former CD Projekt Red developer Jakub Ben has formed a new studio called Dark Passenger. The studio’s staff has worked on cinematics for games such as Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077.

Ben is a co-founder of Dark Passenger, along with Pawel Kuleta as the COO and Magdalena Furman as a 3D character animator. Currently, the studio is looking to hire for many roles including gameplay programmer, tech artist, environmental artist, and sound designer.

The studio’s first game is a multiplayer online game set in Feudal Japan one built using Unreal Engine 5 that includes co-op, PVP, and PVE. It tells the story of an invader that overthrew the ruling shogun and established a new throne.

WE'RE HIRING.#gamedev #gamedeveloper #multiplayer #coop #pvp #pve #UE5 #unrealengine5 #FPP #hiring #job #jobs #rekrutacja #praca #work #job #programista #animator #techart #animation #sfx #3ddesigner #environmentart #characterart #programmer #polishgamedev #gry #grysieciowe pic.twitter.com/vj32X4u7Rg

— Dark Passenger (@DPassenger_) July 25, 2022

“Our goal is to create highly exciting online games that focus on both cooperation and competition. We are fascinated by human interactions, alliances, daring confrontations, and unexpected twists,” says Dark Passenger on its website.

“To make each game unique and surprising, we use many procedural solutions. Although all players will have the same goal, each time it will require changing tactics and moving different paths.”

According to the studio's website, Players assume the role of shinobi and kunoichi where they will face the ruler’s underlings and other assassins as they search for powerful mysterious artifacts. Players have multiple ways to traverse the land, such as running on city rooftops, climbing pagodas, and sneaking through shrines and temples. There will also be various social classes for characters, all the way from simple villagers to high nobles and samurai.

There is a character customization system where players can create their own unique characters and modify their equipment. Various weapons including katanas, tanto, and shurikens will be available. Players can also build their own dojo and invite their friends to train together.

Dark Passenger follows several other new studios formed by former CDPR developers including Rebel Wolves, formed by former Cyberpunk 2077 co-director, and Covenant, which announced a dark strategy game called Gord.

No release window for this game has been revealed for Dark Passenger's new game, but the official website lists that it will come to PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, as well as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey