Microsoft has announced that the Xbox Games With Gold program will no longer include Xbox 360 games starting in October.
In an email to users (as reproduced on Reddit), Microsoft says, "Beginning October 1, 2022, the monthly games provided to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Xbox Live Gold members via Games with Gold will no longer include Xbox 360 titles.
"We have reached the limit of our ability to bring Xbox 360 games to the catalog; however, Games with Gold will continue to include exciting Xbox One titles and exclusive savings each month. This will not impact any Xbox 360 games that you downloaded before October 2022. Any Xbox 360 titles that you redeem via Games with Gold before that time are yours to keep on your Xbox account, regardless of whether you continue your subscription."
Games With Gold usually contains two Xbox One games and two Xbox 360 games that subscribers can download for free each month. However, during some months, one of the Xbox 360 games is replaced with an original Xbox title, such as July 2021 did with Conker: Live & Reloaded.
Whether the company substitutes the two Xbox 360 games with two additional Xbox One games, or simply downsizes Games With Gold to just two Xbox One titles is currently unknown.
Microsoft has slowly been consolidating its subscription services – Xbox Game Pass Ultimate includes Xbox Live Gold, for example. Back in 2020, Microsoft confirmed that it had no plans to discontinue Xbox Live Gold despite putting an end to 12-month subscription options.
This month's Games With Gold line-up includes Beasts of Maravilla Island, Relicta, Thrillville: Off the Rails, and Torchlight.
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey
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Google has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit with small app developers who alleged the tech giant violated federal antitrust laws.
As reported by Reuters, Google will pay $90 million, to be split between US-based app developers. The lawsuit claimed that the Google Play Store's policies forced developers to use the storefront's billing system, which imposed a 30 percent fee on all transactions As a response to the lawsuit, Google announced back in 2021 that it would only charge developers a 15 percent fee on the first million dollars of revenue earned from the Google Play Store each year.
In a blog post detailing the settlements, Wilson White, Google VP of Government Affairs & Public Policy, notes that the $90 million Google agrees to pay to settle the lawsuit would be put towards a fund. Should the court approve the proposed settlement, access to the fund will be made available to app developers that generated $2 million or less in annual revenue between 2016 through 2021.
"A vast majority of U.S. developers who earned revenue through Google Play will be eligible to receive money from this fund, if they choose," White notes in the blog post. "If the Court approves the settlement, developers that qualify will be notified and allowed to receive a distribution from the fund."
The lawsuit follows a similar one aimed at Apple, which was settled in August 2021, where the iPhone maker agreed to pay $100 million to US app developers. That settlement also saw Apple clarifying its policies, allowing iOS developers to now reach out to customers and inform them about payment options offered outside of the App Store (and bypassing Apple's 30 percent App Store fee).
Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
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Almost two years ago I reviewed the ROG Zephyrus Duo 15, a gaming laptop with two displays. And now Asus is back at it again, this time with the ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 that boasts a 16-inch main display with a 14-inch secondary display just below it. It still looks wildly cool and chaotic, but this time around I’ve actually found a use for the second screen.
Specs
Here are the specifications of the Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 I’ve been testing:
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU, 16GB GDDR6
Memory: 16GB DDR5 4,800Mhz
OS: Windows 11 Pro
Storage: 1 x 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD
Webcam: 720p HD IR camera
Ports: 1 x microSD card reader, 1 x HDMI 2.1, 1 x 3.5mm audio jack, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C w/DisplayPort support, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C w/DisplayPort support and power deliver, 1 x Ethernet, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
The Duo 16 is a beast. It’s big, heavy and I’m here for it. The black exterior is broken up by a dot matrix design that’s cut in half diagonally on the lid by a blue and purple line, with the rest of the lid left plain, save for the ROG logo that uses the same blue and purple color scheme.
The hinge connects on both outer edges of the housing, with another dot matrix-like design found on the back portion of the housing, along with status lights. As you lift the lid, you’ll feel a touch of resistance the further you push it up. The resistance comes from the lid also pulling up the touch-capable Screenpad+ display, which rests at a 13-degree angle. Underneath the display are a couple of airflow vents to help improve the cooling system.
Below the Screenpad+ is a revamped keyboard and a larger touchpad that can be transformed into a digital number pad. To switch between the touchpad and number pad you long press on the small silkscreened button that’s on the touchpad itself. After a second or two, the touchpad displays a red numpad that you can use to quickly punch in numbers. When you’re done, you long-press on the same button to go back to a standard touchpad.
The 16-inch display is sandwiched between two vertical bezels that are impressively thin. Along the top of the display is a 720P infrared camera that works with Windows Hello to use facial recognition for tasks such as signing in to your Windows account or logging into apps.
On the right side of the deck is a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port that supports DisplayPort for connecting an external monitor. On the left side of the deck is where a 3.5mm headphone jack, a microSD card reader, a second USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port with Power Delivery and DisplayPort support, a standard USB 3.2 Gen 2 port and the charging port are found.
On the rear of the laptop’s housing you’ll find three more ports – another standard USB port, an HDMI 2.1 port and a 2.5G Ethernet port.
I’ve said it before, but I really appreciate it when laptop makers spread the ports out as they are on the Duo 16. It looks cleaner than overloading a single side of the laptop with ports, along with the connections and cables that come along with it.
The Duo 16 isn’t something you’ll want to get in the habit of carrying around everywhere with you simply due to its weight of 5.78 pounds. Still, its dimensions are impressively small given that there’s a 16-inch display involved, measuring 13.98 x 10.47 x 0.81 inches.
Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 – Performance and gaming
Inside the Duo 16 I’ve been testing is all of the high-end components I’d put on my wishlist if I was building a gaming laptop from scratch and a budget wasn’t involved. More specifically, the Duo 16 houses an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX mobile processor with 8-cores and 16-threads, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti laptop GPU with 16GB of GDDR6 of memory, a 2TB NVMe SSD for storage and 32GB of DDR5 4,800MHz memory.
It’s a good thing it has specs that are sure to make your friends jealous, too. Performance is good, if not great on the Duo 16 – and when you look at its benchmark scores compared to two equally impressive builds in the Gigabyte Aero 16 and MSI Raider GE76, it sits right in the middle of the two.
For example, the Duo 16 more or less matches the GE76’s performance in 3DMark tests, but then saw its average frames per second in gaming benchmarks consistently below the GE76’s. That said, it did beat the Aero 16’s scores almost across the board.
My personal experience with the Duo 16 was similar. Using it for everyday, common tasks such as streaming Spotify or Twitch while talking with colleagues and friends in Slack and Discord with a number of tabs open in Edge, I never saw any performance hiccups or slowdowns. I didn’t see any hiccups when gaming, either, but I did expect to see higher fps numbers than I did.
When I first installed Warzone and started adjusting to graphics settings, I thought something was broken. I’m accustomed to seeing the memory bar on the right side of the screen fill up and eventually turn red as it goes past the suggested limit. However, with all graphics settings on high and ray tracing enabled, Warzone didn’t get remotely close to taking up the full 16GB of GPU memory.
With all graphics settings on high, ray tracing turned on, and DLSS set to Quality, the Duo 16 hovered right around 120 fps. If I switched DLSS to performance, the average fps jumped up to 123 – so not much of a difference.
I also spent a good amount of time playing Fortnite, again with all graphics settings on high, and saw an average of 110 fps. At first, I expected performance, even with maxed-out settings, to be higher than those numbers, but then I remembered I was playing at the Duo 16’s full resolution of 2560×1600. I’ll take 120 fps of practically 2K gaming on a laptop any day of the week.
Speaking of the display, I really liked the color quality, saturation and overall clarity of the Duo 16’s screen. With a little bit of tweaking to graphics settings it’s easily within reach to get Warzone or Fortnite to match the display's 165Hz refresh rate.
With the keyboard at the front of the housing, there isn’t a comfortable palm rest. Because of that, Asus includes a palm rest that snugs up to the front of the deck. The keyboard feels like a mix of mechanical and chiclet, with plenty of movement and a silent switch-like sound and feel.
The touchpad is too small to be used all day long, but it does its job and is comfortable to use for short periods of time.
With the Duo 15 I never really found a purpose for the second screen. Sure, I could view my system stats while I was gaming and ensure everything was running smoothly – but I never felt like having the second screen was a true benefit. With the Duo 16, however, I found myself using the second screen for activities I would normally use an external monitor for. For example, I often had Twitch open and streaming on the bottom Screenpad+ while I browsed the web, wrote an email or completed some other random task on the top display.
While gaming, I could have Discord open on the bottom display, for instance, to monitor different chats and servers I’m in. I do wish that more apps and games supported the Screenpad+; it’d be awesome to see an option to manage your custom loadouts in Warzone or perhaps have an always-on map on the bottom screen in Fortnite.
Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 – Battery life
Battery life is always an issue on gaming laptops, but I was surprised at the Duo 16’s performance given that two displays remained on during the battery test. I looked through every settings pane I could find for a switch to turn off the Screenpad+ display to no avail. So I lowered both screens’ brightness to 50% like I always do for battery benchmarks and let the test run.
The Duo 16 powered through 2 hours and 59 minutes before it ran out of power. That’s one minute longer than the single-display Aero 16 lasted in the same test, and 38 minutes less than the GE76 (again, with a single screen).
Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 – Software
When you drop over $4,000 on a gaming laptop, the last thing you want to deal with is preinstalled bloatware and random apps. And with the Duo 16, I’m happy to say that isn’t an issue.
Asus has some of its own apps preinstalled, and the standard Windows 11 apps are present, but that’s par for the course. The Asus app I used the most during my testing was Armoury Crate. It’s in that app where you go to adjust performance settings, view system stats, change the individually lit keyboard’s color scheme or check for firmware and system updates that are specific to Asus.
EA's Battlefield series will seemingly return to including single player campaigns, according to a new job listing at the publisher's Seattle-based studio.
As reported by VGC, the design director will be responsible for "creating a best-in-class single player campaign experience" with a "player-first mentality, motivated by a passionate aim to understand and serve the players who are engaged with the game". The ideal candidate must have a "passion and understanding of single player campaigns and how to innovate within that space."
Battlefield 2042 – the latest game in the series that has had a fairly turbulent post-release period – didn't feature a campaign at all, while other recent entries such as Battlefield V have opted for shorter single player portions or multiplayer-blended campaigns.
The job listing therefore suggests that EA will be backtracking on this somewhat, though it is still unclear exactly what this new project will entail. According to the job listing, the Seattle studio, which was only founded in late 2021, "is focused on building rich, exciting stories with memorable characters and powerful experiences all in the Battlefield universe."
This matches sentiments from Respawn co-founder Vince Zampella in December that EA is now looking to create a "connected Battlefield universe" that explores different routes and business models – perhaps one of which is a dedicated single player project.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
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Basketball legend Michael Jordan will be the cover star of NBA 2K23's special editions and 2K is bringing back the iconic Jordan Challenges to celebrate. The publisher also confirmed a September 9 release date and announced the six-time NBA champion will grace the covers of the aptly named Michael Jordan Edition and the limited Championship Edition.
Jordan was chosen not only because 2K23 matches his iconic jersey number but also, 2K said, because his spirit matches the theme of this year's MyPlayer campaign mode: Answer the Call. "After making 23 the most recognizable number in sports, it was only fitting that for NBA 2K23 we introduce the Michael Jordan Edition," said Alfie Brody, vice president of global marketing strategy for NBA 2K.
While the prices of these editions wasn't revealed – nor the standard edition's cover star – last year's special edition (likely the Michael Jordan edition tier) was $99.99 compared to the standard's price of $59.99/$69.99 depending on the console generation.
The Championship Edition, however, is a brand new tier of NBA 2K editions that comes with a year's subscription to NBA League Pass, which grants access to every actual, real-life NBA game on TV. Given this is $50 by itself, those looking to buy this most expensive edition should expect a hefty price hike.
2K hasn't revealed too much else about what comes in each edition but did confirm that the iconic Jordan Challenges from NBA 2K11 will make a return in this year's game. The Jordan Challenges were a series of ten, well, challenges where players had to recreate defining moments of Jordan's career.
There will be a slight upgrade of 15 different challenges in 2K23, however, pulling moments from Jordan's NBA career with the Chicago Bulls alongside his Team USA playtime. All ten original challenges will be rebuilt from the ground up and feature alongside the remaining five in their own game mode.
2K23 will mark Jordan's fourth appearance on an NBA 2K cover, first appearing in 2K11 (alongside the original Jordan Challenges), then 2K12, followed by the 2K16 Special Edition.
2K promised that more details will arrive soon, while a deeper look at the Jordan Challenges will be released sometime this summer.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
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