Earlier this week, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 had an update that teased the return of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. In a skate park map called The Grind, there is a banner with the THPS logo and the date "03.04.25." Now, the official site for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater has a countdown clock to March 4, 2025, which may mean an announcement is imminent.

The very first Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game was released by Activision in September 1999. Although the 25th anniversary has come and gone, Hawk revealed last year that he has been in contact with Activision about doing something to celebrate that quarter century milestone. Hawk later confirmed that the long-running franchise will continue.

If there's news coming soon regarding the future of THPS, there are two likely options. The first is another remake like 2020's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, which helped revitalize interest in the games. There have been some predictions that Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 could follow. However, a more enticing prospect would be a brand-new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. The last fully original game in the series to hit consoles was 2015's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5. Additionally, there was a previous report that the next Tony Hawk game could arrive as soon as this summer. Given the timing of the announcement, that seems very plausible.

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Last year, at MagicCon Las Vegas, Wizards Of The Coast revealed three "Universes Beyond" collaboration sets would be coming to Magic: The Gathering in 2025: Final Fantasy, Spider-Man, and one mystery set. Today, during a preview panel at MagicCon Chicago, the company confirmed which IP will be the focus of that mystery set: Avatar: The Last Airbender.

A brief teaser video gave a quick glimpse of the characters and art that will feature in the set, but no cards were unveiled at the panel. The Avatar expansion will launch November 21, while Final Fantasy is scheduled for June and Spider-Man is still awaiting its release date.

The full MTG 2025 release calendar also includes three in-universe sets: Aetherdrift, which launched February 14, Tarkir: Dragonstorm, which launches April 11, and Edge Of Eternities, which is due August 1. The MagicCon Chicago preview panel also unveiled multiple cards for the aforementioned Tarkir: Dragonstorm, including the serialized Headliner card for the set in Mox Jasper--the first in Magic's continuing "mox" line of cards since Mox Opal and Chrome Mox in 2020. Those cards can be seen below.

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Nintendo Alarmo - Interactive Alarm Clock

$100

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Nintendo Alarmo is now available to purchase for $100 at Best Buy. The Nintendo-themed interactive alarm clock first released in October at the Nintendo Store, but you needed a Switch Online membership to buy it. At that time, Nintendo said Alarmo would launch at major retailers in March 2025. The quirky accessory has arrived a bit earlier than expected.

Alarmo is currently only available at Best Buy (and the Nintendo Store). That said, we'd expect the gamified alarm clock to pop up at other major retailers soon, including Walmart, Target, and GameStop. It's possible Amazon will sell it, too. While the online retail giant doesn't carry Nintendo Switch products at this time, it still stocks a wide variety of official Nintendo merch.

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Riot's League of Legends fighting game, 2XKO, won't receive a big March playtest as originally planned. Instead, it will receive a "much smaller one" while the team looks to "build out the infrastructure" for a much larger test "later this year."

The news comes from 2XKO game director Shaun Rivera on X, whose response came after leaks regarding the cancelation of the March playtest and new features began circulating on the 2XKO subreddit, prompting the team to "clear up some misinformation."

Although a big playtest similar to the 2XKO Alpha Lab 1 playtest now won't be coming until later this year, the update isn't all bad news. Rivera also officially revealed some new features coming to 2XKO. One major change will see the game's Pulse Fuse (which enables beginner-friendly autocombos) removed. However, autocombo functionality will instead be added as a toggleable option in the game's settings.

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Neil Druckmann is one of gaming's biggest names, and he's helped write and direct games in the critically and commercially successful franchises like The Last of Us and Uncharted. But Druckmann isn't always confident in what he's making while he's making it--with one exception.

During a speech at the DICE Summit recently attended by VentureBeat, Druckmann said only with 2009's Uncharted 2: Among Thieves did he feel "confident" throughout the process. "Every other project where I was at the head of it, I was sure at many points that we were not going to succeed. You just have to power past that feeling," he said.

Part of what creates anxiety for Druckmann is the scope and scale of any given project, including staff and large budgets. "There's all this pressure," he said. "There's no formula for how to succeed. You can never guarantee success. All you can do is follow your instincts, follow the advice the team gives you, trust the process," he said.

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Avowed was originally going to have multiplayer components, similar to that of Destiny where players could walk around in a massive world.

In an interview with Bloomberg, director Carrie Patel said that Obsidian Entertainment pitched Avowed as a cross between Destiny and Skyrim to prospective buyers, which ended with Microsoft purchasing the studio. Avowed's development started in 2018 but went through two reboots, which led Obsidian to scrap its multiplayer component.

The second reboot occurred in January 2021, when Obsidian replaced Avowed's leadership as they were about to enter production. Patel initiated two major pivots to Avowed, the first of which was to focus on its story and lore from the Pillars of Eternity universe. The second was to replace Avowed's original open world with open-zone ones, similar to that of Obsidian's The Outer Worlds. The latter decision was made so that the development team could create more distinct and denser spaces.

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If you already own Windows 10, you can upgrade to Windows 11 for free with a PC system update. But if you are currently in the process or planning on building a PC, you'll likely need to purchase a license. StackSocial is currently offering a Windows 11 Pro license deal that will get you Microsoft's latest operating system for super cheap. License keys are discounted to $15 at StackSocial, but if you enter promo code UPGRADE at checkout, you'll get a Windows 11 Pro license for only $10. StackSocial also has Windows 11 Home for $15, though the promo code only works with the Pro license.

If you purchased Windows 11 Pro or Home directly from Microsoft, you'd pay $200 or $139, respectively.

Get deal at StackSocial

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Victrix Pro BFG Wireless Controllers

$139 (was $180) for Xbox & PC --- $159 (was $180) for PS5 & PC

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The stellar Victrix Pro BFG Wireless Controller for Xbox and PC is on sale for only $139 (was $180) at Amazon and Best Buy. This is the lowest price we've seen for the Xbox edition, but the discount only applies to the black model. The Pro BFG is a modular controller with a wealth of customization features and swappable components. PS5 and PS4 users can also save on multiple different editions of the Pro BFG, including the recently released Call of Duty Field Op Edition, though the discounts aren't as steep.

Victrix Pro BFG Controllers for Xbox and PC

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Amidst the abrupt layoffs of some employees who worked Marvel Rivals, it's now reported that the game's cancelation was considered prior to its release, which is a surprising revelation, given it has already surpassed 40 million players.

According to Bloomberg, there were discussions about canceling the game. NetEase CEO William Ding reportedly didn't want to pay Disney for using popular Marvel characters like Spider-Man and Wolverine, and asked artists to replace them with NetEase's own hero designs. While this change didn't end up happening, the wasted effort reportedly cost millions of dollars. However, a NetEase spokesperson denied this account, explaining that the company and Marvel have had a close relationship since 2017.

The sudden layoff of US-based Marvel Rivals developers despite the game's massive success raised questions among fans. "We recently made the difficult decision to adjust Marvel Rivals’ development team structure for organizational reasons and to optimize development efficiency for the game," NetEase said in a statement earlier this week. "This resulted in a reduction of a design team based in Seattle that is part of a larger global design function in support of Marvel Rivals."

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NetEase is getting more aggressive when it comes to cracking down on the use of third-party plugins while playing Marvel Rivals. It's now banning the use of an application called Blitz, although NetEase is being lenient in that it won't ban players who previously used the software.

A notice against using third-party plugins was put out on Marvel Rivals' website today, February 21. It specifically calls out Blitz, a third-party application that can be used while playing games like League of Legends or Fortnite to gain insight into informative data about competitive games that players can't typically see. In Marvel Rivals' case, NetEase says players using Blitz could see damage and healing statistics, predict the use of Ultimate abilities, and use it to help decide which heroes to ban in competitive play.

While it's not as aggressive as cheating software that helps players see through walls or always have precise aim, NetEase explained that "we deem this program as cheating software and will no longer allow its use during gameplay." Thankfully for the Marvel Rivals players who use Blitz, this ban is not retroactive.

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It's not exactly a secret that Fallout 76's launch was a mess in 2018. Yet, almost seven years later, the online RPG has become a major success for Bethesda and Microsoft--and the source of pride for a former project lead on the game who witnessed first-hand the low lows.

Speaking with PC Gamer, Jeff Gardiner discussed the rollercoaster ride of making and maintaining Fallout 76. "Working on a live-service game comes with a lot of stress, because it just doesn't go away," said Gardiner, who was at Bethesda for 15 years before founding Something Wicked Games. In fact, Gardiner faced negative feedback while out and about in his daily life at one point. "I got yelled at in an Apple Store, I'll never forget," he said.

Gardiner left Bethesda in 2021, seeing the release of the Wastelanders expansion before exiting the developer. While Fallout 76 became even more popular thanks to the Amazon TV series, Gardiner still saw quite the turnaround for the online RPG. "When you put a game out that's that maligned, especially on a team that has had such success, the morale is doubly bad internally," Gardiner said. "So it was my job to make the people who are making the game like the game."

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While recent reports have shown that WB Games is struggling and titles like Wonder Woman are years away from release, a new game based on DC Comics, DC: Dark Legion, is launching on PC, iOS, and Android next month.

DC: Dark Legion is based on the Dark Nights: Metal comic book storyline and lets players recruit superheroes and villains to fight off multiversal threats. In practice, gameplay is split into multiple parts. At the Batcave, players build rooms and train heroes. Then, players can explore places like Gotham City, Metropolis, and Atlantis to fight enemies in bite-sized real-time strategy battles or other players through PvP. With a cinematic trailer, developer FunPlus confirmed that DC: Dark Legion will release on March 14.

Pre-registrations are available now on the App Store and Google Play. FunPlus, which has worked on popular mobile games like State of Survival, is promising players special rewards if they hit certain pre-registration milestones. The following rewards were outlined in a press release:

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Nvidia's new 50-series graphics cards just aren't as good at running certain older games as previous hardware generations were, some PC gamers have discovered. With its latest generation of GPUs, Nvidia has quietly removed support for PhysX, a physics simulation technology that was used in a number of popular titles in the early 2010s.

In a Reddit post, as spotted by The Verge, one user questioned why PhysX was suddenly turned off by default, or when turned on was forced to run on the CPU--causing major performance issues in games designed for GPU-enhanced PhysX. Responding to a post on the Nvidia forums, the company confirmed that PhysX has effectively been discontinued, due to Nvidia ending support for 32-bit CUDA applications for 50-series graphics cards and future generations. While the end of support for 32-bit CUDA was noted in a brief support article, Nvidia never explicitly mentioned the impact to PhysX, or noted which games might be impacted with the sunsetting of this technology.

PhysX's GPU-accelerated physics tech was acquired by Nvidia in 2008, and its realistic simulation of moving cloth, liquids, smoke and fog, and shatter particle effects was implemented in a number of popular AAA games of the time--including Borderlands 2, Assassin's Creed Black Flag, the Batman: Arkham trilogy, and the first two Metro games.

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A couple of years ago, the idea of PlayStation-exclusive games being ported to PC would have seemed highly unlikely, but times have changed. Insomniac's Spider-Man games, Housemarque's Returnal, and the Horizon series are just a few of the big PlayStation properties that have recently made their way to PC since 2020, and former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida recently spoke about how doing so was almost like having a license to print money.

"Releasing on PC does many things: it reaches a new audience who do not own consoles--especially in regions where consoles are not as popular," Yoshida said in an interview with Sacred Symbols+ (via Push Square). "The idea is that those people may become fans of a particular franchise, and when a new game in that series comes out, they may be convinced to purchase a PlayStation. It also adds additional income, because porting to PC is way cheaper than creating an original title. So, it's almost like printing money. And that helps us to invest in new titles now that the cost of games has increased."

The benefit to Sony's push into PC gaming is that it has also allowed it to reach very lucrative markets like China, where PCs are far more popular than consoles. "China is a growing but very small console market. In order to reach the audience in countries like China then it's crucial to release on PC. So, I believe PC versions really reach a new audience," Yoshida added.

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Author George R.R. Martin, who was involved in coming up with some of the lore of From Software's Elden Ring, has commented on the possibility of the game becoming a movie.

Speaking to IGN, Martin said he "can't say too much about it," but did indeed confirm that there is "some talk about about making a movie out of Elden Ring."

In Hollywood, nothing is certain, so no one should get their hopes up to see an Elden Ring movie soon, or ever. Martin acknowledged this, saying "we'll see" if the movie "comes to pass." Even if an Elden Ring movie does materialize, Martin said he's not sure what the extent of his involvement could be. "I don't know," he said, before going on to acknowledge that he's "a few years behind" on his long-awaited Winds of Winter. "So that limits the amount of things that I can do," he said.

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Fortnite is offline right now, but fortunately it's not because anything is wrong. Quite the opposite, in fact--Fortnite is down because of routine scheduled maintenance that Epic does with every update. In this case, the update is a big one: the launch of Fortnite battle royale Chapter 6 Season 2, featuring major changes to the island, piles of new weapons and gadgets, and the arrival of Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat.

Chapter 6 got off to quite a bang during Season 1, as Fortnite introduced the permanent OG mode with its own separate battle pass, and also the Counter-Strike-esque Ballistic mode. In January, the season ramped up once more with the addition of the player-controlled Godzilla boss and the arrival of Hatsune Miku in Festival. But all things must come to an end--we had our fun with the ridiculous Typhoon Blade, but now it's time to move on to less civilized weapons, like the big drill weapon we saw in the trailer.

Fortnite Chapter 6 Season 2 start time

When the servers come back up, it'll be Lawless season, which is all about committing armed robbery. That's right, it's Fortnite's fourth heist-themed season. But where the past seasons like this had more of a classy bent, Lawless season is going to be more in the vein of Grand Theft Auto--mayhem is the name of the game here.

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The option to romance NPC characters in RPGs has been around for a long time, and even recent titles like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 offer that feature to players. However, Avowed is bucking that trend by almost completely removing players' ability to court their companions. According to Avowed director Carrie Patel, she made the decision to downplay romance because she felt it takes away from the experience of playing the game.

While appearing on IGN's Unlocked podcast, Patel revealed that she believes the romantic options in RPGs "undermine that core experience" and practically invite players to focus more on the romance than on the story or even the characters themselves. Instead, Patel favored a more natural form of bonding with the player's companions that doesn't end with two characters in bed.

"My hope with players and their companion relationships in Avowed is that they would feel natural, and players would get out of them exactly what they want and exactly as much as they put in," said Patel. She added that it was supposed to be like "you're getting to know some new friends."

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Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Monster Manual

$49.47

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A new version of the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual, one of the seminal tabletop RPG's most important source books, was released earlier this week. This is the first new version of the book in a decade and is the third new entry in the D&D 2024 Edition Core Collection along with the new 2024 Player's Handbook and 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide that launched last year--and just like those other releases, the new Monster Manual is compatible with D&D 5E books and supplemental materials. You can pick up the 2024 Monster Manual for $49.47 at Amazon.

Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Monster Manual $49.47

The hardcover Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Monster Manual includes stats blocks, lore, and other information for over 500 unique monsters for your D&D campaigns, including 75 all-new creatures. The book also offers guidance on creating unique combat encounters and boss monsters, as well as blueprints for crafting humanoid NPCs. All that gameplay information is supplemented with over 300 pieces of art.

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As mentioned above, Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Monster Manual is part of the new D&D 2024 Edition Core Collection. This updated version of the game--also known as 5.5E--is designed as an enhanced and streamlined version of D&D 5E. While the new 2024 editions of the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and now Monster Manual all introduce new gameplay elements and tweaked rules, they are also backward compatible with 5E materials, including all rulebooks, adventure modules, expansions, and third-party 5E supplements. That also means you can use your existing 5E characters with the new 5.5E rulebooks.

If you're new to D&D or are considering updating all your books to the new versions, you'll find the other Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Edition releases at Amazon, including the new Player's Handbook and updated accessories like official character sheets and DM screen. The only book currently not available at Amazon is the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, but we expect it will be restocked in the near future. You can also purchase digital versions of the new 2024 Edition rulebooks via D&D Beyond.

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Nintendo Switch OLED - Super Mario Bros. Wonder Console Bundle

$350

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Nintendo has released a new Switch OLED bundle featuring one of the console's best exclusive games: Super Mario Bros. Wonder. The bundle costs $350--the same price as the Switch OLED on its own--so you're essentially getting a digital copy of Nintendo's superb side-scrolling platformer for free. Mario Wonder still regularly sells for its full $60 MSRP. As an added bonus, the bundle also comes with a 3-month Switch Online individual membership ($8 value).

The Super Mario Bros. Wonder Switch OLED bundle is available now at Best Buy. We expect other major retailers, with the exception of Amazon, to stock the bundle soon.

Nintendo typically only releases new Switch console variants or bundles during the holidays and alongside big game launches--such as the Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom-themed Switch Lite that launched last year. But with the Switch 2 slated to launch later this year, it makes sense that Nintendo would bundle the Switch with Mario Wonder to help move existing units.

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There's a famous line in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings where Gandalf the Grey explains that a wizard is never late or early. Instead, "he arrives precisely when he means to." Video games, on the other hand, are another matter. Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game has been delayed again.

The game's developers, Private Division and Wētā Workshop, jointly announced that Tales of the Shire will now be released on July 29. Prior to that, Tales of the Shire was delayed from its 2024 release window and was scheduled to land on March 25. Now, fans will just have to wait until summer to move into the virtual Shire.

In the statement below, the given reason for the delay is that the devs want to ensure "the same cozy experience" is available on all platforms. The note also states that the developers want the game "to feel like a warm hug from Middle-earth."

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