Black Friday is always the best time of year for finding gaming deals--if you're looking to save some money before the holidays, it's a cornucopia of discounts you don't want to miss out on. If you own an Xbox Series X/S or Xbox One, one of last year's best Black Friday deals is returning. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will see huge discounts during Black Friday at several different retailers, bringing three-month memberships down from $45 to the low $20 range. The service gets users access to the entire Xbox Game Pass library across console and PC in addition to EA Access, Xbox Live Gold, and more.Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is the best purchase you can make if you're an Xbox gamer, thanks to the large number of games you have access to every month. It's especially great for those with the new Xbox Series X or S consoles, as there are a lot of next-gen games included. If you're a new subscriber, you'll want to snag your first month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $1 first, then stack on extra months with the discounted memberships during Black Friday.If you're looking for more great Xbox deals, check out Black Friday's best Xbox Series X and Xbox One game deals. You can expect some incredible discounts on brand-new games, including Watch Dogs: Legion and Gears Tactics for half-off. And if you're still looking to buy the Xbox Series X and S, we're tracking availability. The next-gen consoles will be restocked at some retailers during Black Friday.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Because movie theaters have been closed in 2020, movie studios have had to pivot, either pushing back movie theater releases or going VOD. The latest film to pivot in this way is Pixar's Soul, which will arrive on Disney+ on December 25. Disney's Mulan also released on the streaming service, but at a premium price. So why is Soul going a different route?During the Q4 earnings investor call Disney CEO Bob Chapek discussed why this decision was made. "From a studio content standpoint, we were very pleased with the results of Mulan as a Premier Access title, and as you remember, that was our very first foray into strategy like Premier Access," Chapek explained. "Unfortunately, that title met with some controversy, both in the US and internationally shortly after we released it."But we saw enough very positive results before that controversy started to know that we've got something here in terms of the Premier Access strategy," Chapek continued, and he said he'll explain a bit more about that strategy in December. "In terms of Soul, we also realized that part of the lifeblood Disney+ is providing great content to the base level subscribers that are in there. So the idea is that we thought it was a really nice gesture to our subscribers to take Soul during the holiday period and provide that as part of the service."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Disney, like so many of us, is having a rough year. The company makes a huge part of its yearly income from theme parks, and the COVID-19 pandemic means that some of those parks have are closed. The California state government has been especially strict about re-opening, and the studio has consistently blamed the state as responsible for its continued park closure. Disney CEO Bob Chapek called the state's re-opening restrictions "arbitrary" and accused the state of destroying local small businesses after nearly eight months of closure."We are extremely disappointed that the state of California continues to keep Disneyland closed," Chapek said during an investor call during a Q4 earnings call. "Despite our proven track record, our health and safety protocols are all science based and have the support of labor unions representing 99% of our hourly cast members. Frankly, as we and other civic leaders have stated before, we believe state leadership should look objectively at what we've achieved successfully at our parks around the world, all based on science as opposed to setting an arbitrary standard precluding our cast members from getting back to work while decimating small businesses in the local community."Disney parks have re-opened elsewhere, including Florida, China, and Japan, while its park in France remains closed. In a normal year, Disneyland and Disney California Adventure draw around 18.7 million visitors to the park and, consequently, businesses in the city of Anaheim. The park had added the Star Wars Galaxy's Edge expansion to the park just last May, too, which likely only increased that number.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Disney's entry into the crowded streaming market, Disney+, has revealed its current subscriber numbers, and they're massive. The service has succeeded despite stiff competition from Netflix, HBO Max, and others."I'm pleased to report that as of the end of the fourth quarter Disney plus had more than 73 million paid subscribers, far surpassing our expectations in just its first year," said Disney CEO Bob Chapek in a Q4 earnings call. "We're continuing to see positive trends. The growth of Disney plus speaks volumes about the strength of our IP, our unparalleled franchises and amazing content creators, all part of the Disney difference that sets us apart from everyone else. When you look across our full suite of streaming service, we have exceeded 120 million paid subscriptions worldwide."The full suite Chapek mentions there includes Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, and NHL.TV. The 73 million number Chapek quotes is from just over a year of service. While Disney+ has a massive back catalog of Disney, Star Wars, Marvel, and National Geographic shows and films, though, it hasn't had much in the way of content. The biggest things on the service are wo seasons of The Mandalorian and Hamilton, though other shows like High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (that's the real name) and the final season of Star Wars: Clone Wars have done well, too. The other big ticket item was the live-action Mulan movie, and that costs an extra fee on top of the subscription cost.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The PlayStation 5 is now available in many regions, and new users will likely be jumping into the PlayStation Plus section of the console's store to nab the PlayStation Plus Collection. The Collection includes numerous PS4 games that you can play on PS5--and, as it turns out, on PS4, too.GameSpot can confirm, after conducting tests, that once the Collection has been claimed on a PlayStation 5 the games can be played on a PS4. That means that you'll still need to get your hands on a PS5 to access the Collection, but if you've kept your PS4 you can install the games on there afterwards.If you want to free up some space on the PS5's limited SSD, or set up your PS4 in another room of your home, this could be very handy indeed.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Both the Xbox Series X and Series S are out now, and each console offers a solid entry point into the next generation of gaming. At launch, the new Xbox consoles lean heavily into the existing library of games from the Xbox library, along with new releases like Yakuza: Like A Dragon, Gears Tactics, and Dirt 5. The new consoles also support the fantastic Game Pass service, which allows users to play through some of the greatest hits from Xbox's history.The breadth of games is impressive; however, this also brings attention to the Xbox Series X and Series S's available storage space. With the Series X outfitted with a 1TB SSD for storage and the Series S having a 512GB SSD, you'll likely run into the issue of insufficient storage space for your console once you begin downloading games (particularly because they only allow you to use 802GB and 364GB, respectively). While there is an option to purchase an expansion card that adds an additional 1TB of space, it sits at the pricey cost $220--almost the same retail cost of a Series S. With the rise of game file sizes venturing further into the 100GB-plus range, you'll quickly find out that storage management will be a constant work in progress in this new generation. So with that, here are some tips on how to best organize and save space for your new Xbox console.Xbox Series X|S Storage TipsPrioritize The Games You Want To Keep: One of the crucial things you'll need to do with your next-gen console is to keep an eye out for your available storage space. It's never fun purchasing a new game and then discovering that you lack the open storage to download it. Every game you have in your library will take up space in your console's SSD, and this also includes game discs that will need to load data onto your drive. While you may have the urge to download all your most wanted games at once, it's best to focus on the essentials. You will always have access to purchased games in your account library, so even when you delete the game from your drive, you can still download it again later if you want to revisit the game.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Sony's PlayStation 5 is out now, and it features a whole suite of games that show off what's to come with the next-generation of 4K media and gaming. In addition to new releases like Demon's Souls, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Astro's Playroom, the PS5 also supports an extensive list of PS4 games available for backwards compatible play. Simply put, the PS5 at launch does not have a shortage of games to play and download. However, with an extensive library of games, most of which are continuing the trend of games with large files sizes, you'll have to be a bit more mindful about managing your data.The PS5 comes with a 825GB SSD for storage, about 667GB of which is free for you to use. With the growing size of games like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War--which sits around 200GB--the available real estate in your PS5 can quickly fill up. That's a problem, because PS5 games must be installed to the internal drive, and cannot be moved to external storage. (Backwards-compatible games can be stored and played externally.) Currently, you cannot expand your internal storage at this time, but Sony has stated that PS5 owners will be able to sometime in the future. With this issue in mind, we wanted to offer some tips on how best to optimize and maximize your storage space for your new PlayStation 5.PS5 Storage TipsPrioritize The Games You Want To Keep: One of the crucial things you'll need to do with your next-gen console is keep an eye on your available storage space. It's never fun purchasing a new game and then discovering that you lack the open storage to download it. Every game you have in your library will take up space in your console's SSD, and this also includes game discs that will need to load data onto your drive. While you may have the urge to download all your most wanted games at once, it's best to focus on the essentials. You will always have access to purchased games in your account library, so even when you delete the game from your drive, you can still download it again later if you want to revisit the game.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Half-Life: Alyx has received a major update, adding audio commentary from the game's development team. The VR game, which released in March this year, is now full of anecdotes and information about its own development process.When commentary is turned on, tracks will appear throughout the game as headphone nodes, which you can pick up and "wear" by putting them on your head. The update is free for all owners of the game.There are three hours of commentary in total, and in the trailer below you can hear some snippets. According to the update notes, this commentary was delayed when COVID-19 made recording it all in-studio impossible. "Like much of the world, we are all working from home, which means that rather than using our comfortable high-quality recording studio at the office, we have been recording our commentary voice overs in closets and blanket forts around greater Seattle," it says.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The PlayStation 5 comes in two flavors, including a cheaper digital-only version that does not allow you to play discs. Now, one PS5 launch game has reminded us of one of the major advantages of physical releases--beautiful reversible covers. Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales has some different images inside the case, and it looks great reversed.GameSpot's Evan Langer has picked up a physical copy of the game, and shared some images of what the cover looks like reversed. There are two pictures inside the cover--one of Miles pulling his mask down over his face, and one of Miles, mask off, looking serious. This is from the PlayStation 5 version, but it's likely that the PS4 version features this art too.Spider-Man: Miles Morales reversible coverThe game launched alongside the PS5 on November 12 as a cross-gen title. The sequel to Marvel's Spider-Man earned a 7/10 in GameSpot's Spider-Man: Miles Morales review.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The Beyond Light expansion is now live for Destiny 2, bringing a bunch of changes to the game, including the removal of some old content. As is usually the case with Destiny expansions, it has also brought a few unforeseen problems. One of those issues affects the Trials of Osiris, Destiny 2's toughest multiplayer competition, and it'll be a while before it's fixed.Bungie announced on Twitter that Trials will be out of the game for a few weeks. The multiplayer event, in which teams of three Guardians try to win seven competitive matches in a row without losing one, usually runs during the weekend. The first Trials of the new Destiny season would have started on November 13 and run until the weekly reset on November 17. But Bungie says Trials won't kick off this season until November 27.Due to a recently discovered issue, Trials of Osiris will not be available until the weekend of November 27, 2020. — Bungie Help (@BungieHelp) November 13, 2020It's not clear what the problem with Trials is, but there have been a few problems and bugs cropping up since the release of Beyond Light on November 10. Some players immediately found they could farm a particular Lost Sector in the EDZ region to sprint through the leveling grind, which Bungie fixed. And two weapons, Rose and Witherhoard, had to be disabled because of problems with them. Rose is a hand cannon whose firing speed was supposed to be adjusted down along with a bunch of similar guns, but somehow was missed, while the area-of-effect grenades of Witherhoard were killing players in the multiplayer Crucible, even when they weren't standing in the grenade radius. We're not sure when those weapons will be fixed or re-enabled in the game.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

If you managed to snag a PlayStation 5, then there are a few things you may want to consider doing before you immediately jump into Astro's Playroom, Demon's Souls, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, or whatever game you're planning to play first. And we mean more than just making sure your TV settings and console settings match in order for you to get the best experience possible.The PS5 is a departure from the PS4--unlike the Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One that exist in the same console ecosystem, the PS5 uses a different UI and supports brand-new features and tech. You should know what to disable or enable prior to playing a PS5 game. In fact, there's something you should know before you even download your very first game.Download Your Cloud SavesYou probably don't want to start over from scratch on the games you've already started on PS4. To grab your save data, head into the settings and navigate over to "Saved Data and Game/App Settings." Here's where you can find all of your saved data for both PS5 and PS4 that's been saved to the cloud.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The Nintendo Switch is showing no signs of slowing down. In October 2020--the month before the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 dropped--the Switch sold a staggering 735,926 systems in the US, Businesswire reports. This figure is split between the hybrid model Nintendo Switch and the portable-only Switch Lite.This represents a 136% growth on October 2019 sales, with the COVID-19 pandemic and the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons moving Switch units throughout 2020. Worldwide sales figures of the system, as of September 30, hit 68.3 million units. This new number takes the system's known total to over 69 million.The Switch has now been the top-selling system in the US for 23 months in a row.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The backwards compatibility of the PlayStation 5 is pretty impressive. Fire up the console, sign in to your PlayStation Network account, and navigate to the Library screen, and you can see and easily download just about every PS4 game you own in a digital format. But the user interface gets a little more confusing when you're trying to download a game that's available with both a PS4 and a PS5 version--and it's actually pretty annoying.If you've got a game like Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales that's available on both consoles, you can choose which version you want to download. For some reason, though, the PS5 consistently defaults to downloading PS4 versions of cross-generation games when they appear in your library. It's something that seems likely to get a patch, because there's a very good chance that if you're not careful, you might end up playing the last-gen version of some of the biggest next-gen games on the console right now.Highlight a cross-gen game in the Library tab and you'll almost always see the PS4 version, and not the PS5 version, at first glance--although this fact is not made clear at all. You have to hit the button with the three dots that appears when you select a game in order to pull up a menu where you can choose between and download each version. But it's not at all obvious that this is where you need to go to look for that information, and you can't tell which version you have selected until you open that menu. A lot of times, if you just hit "Download" on a game, you'll learn only later that you installed the wrong version--and then you have to delete it and start the correct download all over again.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

With the Xbox Series X already out and Sony's PlayStation 5 set to launch tomorrow, November 12, the next generation has officially kicked off. Despite that there are surprisingly few games that make exclusive use of both new consoles, which makes early comparisons a bit tricky. Thankfully Devil May Cry V: Special Edition is only for new hardware, and the performance across them is quite surprising.Digital Foundry has published its findings after playing Devil May Cry V on PS5 and Xbox Series X, going through all four of the game's rendering and performance modes. Despite the Xbox Series X's better performance on paper, the real-world findings show that the gap can sometimes be smaller and larger than expected.In the game's Normal mode, for example, both the Xbox Series X and PS5 are tasked with rendering Devil May Cry V at a native 4K with an unlocked frame rate. In this scenario both consoles perform well, with only minor dips below 60fps. But it's also here where the Series X enjoys its biggest performance lead, with an average of 8% more frames-per-second than the PS5.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Like any RPG, Destiny 2: Beyond Light is primarily focused on increasing your power. This is achieved by equipping gear with a higher power level than what your Guardian is currently wearing, the stats of which all contribute towards your overall Light level.Currently, the new soft power cap is 1200, and within a day of the Beyond Light expansion, players have already found a shortcut that reaches that level in record time. The exploit involves visiting one of the earliest Lost Sectors in the game, Widow's Walk, in the Trostland section of the European Dead Zone. Filled with a number of Fallen enemies, this Lost Sector is also home to a high-value target wanted boss who'll always drop gear that's 10 levels higher in power than what you currently have.Because Lost Sectors also refresh whenever you leave them, you're able to quickly exit, reset the zone, and repeat the process until you've reached the 1200 level cap within 60-90 minutes. At that point, the Fallen Captain will no longer drop high-level gear and you'll have to grind Pinnacle events to become even more powerful. If you're playing Destiny 2 on PS5 or Xbox Series X/Series S, the process is even quicker thanks to the faster loading times on those next-gen consoles.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com