If you're looking for a quality pair of active noise cancelling headphones, there are three excellent choices that have all already been marked down for Black Friday: the Bose QuietComfort III, the Sony WH-1000XM4, and the new Apple AirPods Pro. You can't go wrong with any of these. In other deal news, the Retailmenot Cash Back Day has started today and runs till end of day tomorrow. Get 5%, 10%, 15%, and even 40% cash back from over 1,000 retailers including Target, Lowes, Microsoft Store, Instacart, Lenovo, Amazon, and more.

Bose QuietComfort 35 II Active Noise Cancelling Wireless Bluetooth Headphones

There's a new Black Friday price drop on the legendary Bose QuietComfort 35 II headphones, one of the best noise cancelling headphones ever made. Nowadays, there are other contenders including Bose's new updated model, the QC45. That said, it's still one of the best headphones around, and at this price it just can't be beat. At $179 it's a full $150 cheaper than the newest Bose QC45 model and $70 cheaper than the Sony WH1000XM4's Black Friday deal that we've mentioned below.

Sony WH1000XM4 Active Noise Cancelling Wireless Bluetooth Headphones

The ever popular and highly rated Sony WH1000XM4 headphones are back down to $248. This is the lowest price of the year by $30. The WH1000XM4 is oft considered one of the best noise cancelling headsets under $400; it's comparable to the Bose QuietComfort headphones in terms of audio quality and noise cancellation and superior in terms of build quality.

Retailmenot's Cash Back Day Starts Now: Get Up to 5x Cash Back at 1,000+ Stores

Cash Back Day is an annual retail event hosted by Retailmenot that started in 2019. This year, Cash Back Day runs for 48 hours, spanning November 4-5. In order for you to take advantage of this offer, you'll need to follow these steps:

1. Log in or create your RetailMeNot account
2. Click here to find offers you want to activate
3. You’ll be sent to the retailer’s website to make your purchase (you can even use RetailMeNot codes to save money during this step)
4. Allow up to 45 days for your cashback rewards to show up in your RetailMeNot wallet, where you can redeem them via PayPal or Venmo

Over 1,000 stores are eligible for cashback, ranging from Amazon and Target to LEGO, Home Depot, Verizon, Nike, Old Navy, and more. Here are some of our favorites:

New Apple AirPods Pro with MagSafe Charger

Save $60 off the newest Apple AirPods Pro. The updated model is mostly unchanged, but it does come with a new MagSafe wireless charging case. This just means that the new charging case easily connects to Apple's MagSafe wireless charger. No, that's not a big update, but at this price, it's actually cheaper than getting the older generation AirPods Pro.

2021 Samsung TU6985 70" 4K Tizen TV

A 70" Samsung 4K TV for $600 sounds too good to be true, right? Not on Black Friday. The Samsung TU69855 4K TV boasts good image quality in a huge screen, especially at such a low price point. It's also equipped with Samsung's Tizen smart interface, which offers a very intuitive and aesthetically pleasing UI.

Acer Swift 3 14" Intel Iris Xe Ultraportable Laptop

If you're looking for an ultraportable laptop at a low price, you can't beat this deal. The Acer Swift 3 weighs only 2.6 pounds and features a sturdy aluminum chassis. Despite the compact size, there's plenty of power under the hood, including an 11th generation Intel Core i5 processor and the latest Intel Iris Xe graphics all for just under $500.

Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K HDR

The Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K normally goes for $49.99, but it drops to 50% off only twice a year: on Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday. This is the least expensive 4K HDR capable smart TV stick you can buy. The advantage of using a Smart TV USB dongle instead of the built-in interface on your TV is that you can easily move your saved profiles, logins, and passwords from TV to TV.

Alienware Aurora R12 RTX 3060 Ti Gaming PC

Not only is this the best Alienware gaming PC deal right now, it's probably the least expensive prebuilt gaming PC equipped with an RTX 3060 Ti video card anywhere. With the RTX 3060 Ti video card selling for over $800 on eBay, getting a fully built Alienware system with an 11th generation Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of memory, and 512GB of SDD storage for $1399 seems like an absolute steal.

Xbox Game Pass Members (Including PC) Can Play Forza Horizon 5 and Halo: Infinite at Launch

Forza Horizon 5 is out on Friday and its shaping up to be one of the best games of the year. This game is good enough to be worth paying full price, but fortunately you won't have to. Forza Horizon 5 will be available on Xbox Game Pass at launch, which means you could enjoy this spectacular game come Friday for as little as $1. Halo: Infinite comes out on December 8. Your 3 months of Xbox Game Pass for PC will still be active by then.

Xbox Game Pass Members (Including PC) Can Play Battlefield 2042 Early on November 12 for 10 Hours

Battlefield is out on November 19, but Xbox Game Pass members can play the game one week early on November 12 for up to 10 hours. That will give you a chance to test out the release version of the game and decide if you want to preorder it yourself. Note that Battlefield 2042 will NOT be coming to Game Pass at launch, so if you do want to continue playing the game, you'll have to preorder the standalone game.

3 Months of Xbox Game Pass for PC for $1

Available for New AND Existing Members!

Xbox Game Pass for PC is exactly what it sounds like; access to a library of Xbox games that are also playable on PC. There are plenty of top shelf games including Forza Horizon 4, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Destiny 2, Back for Blood, Scarlet Nexus, Cris Tales, Crusader Kings, and much, much more. You'll also get launch day access to huge upcoming games like Halo: Infinite and Forza Horizon 5. And you'll get to test out Battlefield 2042 one week prior to release. The best thing about this deal? Anyone can sign up, even those of you who already have the subscription.

3 Months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate

The sheer amount of value you get with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is impressive. This membership gives you both Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Game Pass, and Xbox Game Pass for PC. Xbox Live Gold is required for online gaming. Xbox Game Pass gives you access to a huge library of games that is free as long as you maintain your membership. The list includes AAA games that you can play as early as launch day. These include MLB The Show 21, FIFA 21, The Medium, and every Bethesda game ever. If you've also got a great gaming PC, Xbox Game Pass for PC offers games like Crusader Kings 3, Forza Horizon 4, Nier Automata, and more.

Early Black Friday Video Game Deals

More Early Black Friday Deals

If you want a complete list of the best early Black Friday deals that are live right now, check out or definitive Black Friday megapost article. We keep it constantly updated with the best early Black Friday deals we've found from Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Dell, and more.

Amazon Games has provided its New World community with an update on many of the features in the game that have experienced issues including character transfers, the game's economy, and much more.

In a developer blog post published to the game's forums, a community manager for New World explained that the team had been working hard to investigate several problems with the MMO before providing an update to fans on the issues that it believes are most critical to the community.

Following recent reports that New World has been suffering from a deflationary currency crisis, the blog post spoke further about the current state of the game's economy and updated fans on what changes the development team would be making going forward.

"From a data standpoint, the economy is performing within acceptable levels," explains the post. "All servers are creating more money than is being removed, and by a good margin. However, the economy is tighter at the end-game currently. When we look at surplus income generated by level, it’s very high in the 1-35 level range, decent in the 40-59 range, and gets narrow at 60. This means that as more players get to level 60, this will start to put more pressure on the economy."

With that in mind, the developer says that it has made two big changes that will help the game's economy going forward. The first of these came in the form of fixing a bug that affected New World's Azoth staff and prevented players from being able to complete some of the end-game features that generated reasonable levels of gold. The second, and more recent change, comes with reintroducing New World's Outpost Rush. This large-scale 20 v 20 PvP experience is available to players at level 60 in the game and according to the developers should go a long way in helping end-game players to find a source of income.

In addition to the changes listed above, the studio has announced further tweaks that it is making in a bid to strengthen the in-game economy. Among a number of other factors, these included extending New World's housing tax period from 5 to 7 days and linking trading posts, a change that the studio says will help to bolster the economy in less traveled territories across the game.

Economy aside, the studio also spoke further about the game's full server issues and problems with character transfers. Since its initial release, the developer has made multiple efforts to resolve server issues and allow players the ability to play with their pre-established friends by transferring their characters between servers in the game.

"It is important to us that everyone have the opportunity to choose which server they are playing on," the developer blog reads. "By the time you are reading this, character transfers will have been re-enabled and most players should be able to move their characters."

"We will continue to monitor your feedback after this wave of Character Transfers is complete and offer additional Transfers if needed. We are also working on region-to-region Character Transfers, but it is difficult to solve and will take time."

To avoid further issues in the future, the studio says that it is monitoring the number of active users within the game's servers to ensure that its 'Full Server Status' continues to be accurate. In addition, the statement also confirmed that going forward, players will receive a 24 hour notice period before a server is marked as full meaning that both existing and new players would have more information to go by before finding out that a server couldn't be joined.

This article has touched upon several of the topics discussed in the developer's blog post. However, the full blog contained information on a range of further issues including property taxes, faction tokens, and much, much more. For more from New World, make sure to check out our dedicated IGN page for the game, which includes a number of helpful tips and guides for the MMO.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

After months and months of waiting, further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Spider-Man is finally coming to Marvel's Avengers on November 30, exclusively for PlayStation players.

Spider-Man is releasing as part of the Spider-Man: With Great Power Hero Event in Marvel's Avengers, which will tell the story of Spider-Man through unlockable challenges.

Surprisingly, Square-Enix made the release date announcement as only a small part of its broader content roadmap update published Thursday.

In Spider-Man's story mode, Peter Parker discovers that A.I.M. plans to acquire tech that would make their robot army invincible, prompting Spidey to join forces with Ms. Marvel and Black Widow, who remain unaware of his identity. One of Spider-Man's big conflicts throughout his journey will be whether to stay a solo superhero or to lend his strength to the Avengers Initiative.

Spider-Man being a PlayStation exclusive stirred up a fair amount of controversy in the Marvel's Avengers player community, with some worrying he won't be a very substantial character since only a portion of players will have access to him. Marvel's Avengers coming to Game Pass for both Xbox and PC just last September, has only widened that gap.

The November 30 update brings several new features for all players, thankfully. A new Klaw raid set after the events of War for Wakanda will have the Avengers returning to the Vibranium Mound to defeat Klaw once and for all.

Here's what else to expect:

• Crystal Dynamics is also increasing maximum player power levels from 150 to 175.
• Gear recycling will let you recycle higher-powered gear to boost your current gear if you prefer to keep your current look.
• Shipments: A new path for players to earn cosmetics and other items via gameplay. Shipments will cost 500 units (in-game currency) and pulls from a collection of in-game items, with a chance to contain an outfit that can't be acquired any other way. Thankfully, you can see what's in the shipment before purchasing it, and you're guaranteed to get a special outfit in every 100 Shipments. Crystal Dynamics says it'll be sharing more information about this feature in the future.
• Per-hero weekly objectives: Rather than using only one hero per week to farm challenges, you can farm rewards with each hero now. Crystal Dynamics says it's exploring applying this change to other parts of Marvel's Avengers as well.

We'll have to wait and see if Spider-Man truly shakes up the Marvel's Avengers community. For now, Square Enix had some less-than-kind words for the troubled games-as-a-service superhero adventure. The publisher called negative reception to the game a "disappointing outcome," the implication being that Crystal Dynamics' roots as a single-player game studio didn't mesh well enough with a games-as-a-service project.

Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/friendly neighborhood freelancer for IGN.

It's time to start shopping for loved ones this holiday season, and art books and coffee table books are a great idea to add to any video game fan's collections. From video game biographies about industry legends like Hideo Kojima and Satoru Iwata, to art books featuring franchises like Halo and Final Fantasy, there's no shortage of gift ideas for every gamer on your shopping list.

The Top 3 Must-Have Video Game Book Gifts

Final Fantasy VII superfans will enjoy the new Final Fantasy VII Remake: Material Ultimania book, which is full of art featuring Cloud, Tifa, Sephiroth, and more. For gamers who aren't into Final Fantasy, check out The Game Console 2.0: A Photographic History from Atari to Xbox. This book shows the evolution of video game consoles and controllers over the last 40 years, including Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo.

Best Halo Book Gifts

Halo Infinite is set to be one of the hottest games this holiday season, and Master Chief superfans will want to flip through the art of the game in The Art of Halo Infinite. The book comes in both standard and deluxe editions, coming from renowned video game book publisher Dark Horse Books.

Best Video Game History Book Gifts

For video game fans wanting to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes, there are plenty of books to choose from this holiday season. Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding fans can learn more about Hideo Kojima, the man behind Solid Snake's adventures. Or, Nintendo fans can reflect on the legacy of the late Satoru Iwata with Ask Iwata. There are also stories about retro games, the NES, and more.

Best Novels for Pop Culture Fans Gifts

Dune and Ready Player One have gone from books to major motion pictures. To help the Dune fan in your life see where it all began, take a look at the Dune Sage 3-book set, which tells the story of the first movie, and well beyond. And, video game fans will love the references in Ready Player One and the sequel, Ready Player Two.

Best Video Game Coffee Table Book Gifts

For fun books to flip through and leave on display for friends and family to see, check out our picks for the best video game coffee table books. There are great coffee table books for fans of The Witcher, Lord of the Rings, Tomb Raider, God of War, and more.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

EA's CEO has said that he believes that NFTs will be an important part of the games industry in the future.

In an earnings call this week, EA CEO Andrew Wilson was asked about the company's stance on "play-to-earn" games and NFTs. "I think the play to earn or the NFT conversation is still really, really early," he said. But he went on to note "I do think it will be an important part of the future of our industry."

"As a company, we have been leaders in the creation of digital content that has real collectible value in the embedding of that content as part of live services," he continued. "What we know about collection over time is the collectibility is far more valuable to the collector where the collected item has utility. And I think that in the context of the games that we create and the live services that we offer, collectible digital content is going to play a meaningful part in our future."

He concluded by telling those on the call that they "should expect us to kind of think more innovatively and creatively about that on a go-forward basis."

Those collections to which Wilson refers can easily include FIFA Ultimate Team, the game mode in which players collect cards from loot box-style systems. But it could easily be envisioned as working across games, such as NFTs for cosmetics in Apex Legends.

NFTs and cryptocurrencies are currently a largely unregulated entity often exploited for scam purposes, and have been accused as having a huge negative impact on the environment due to the energy consumed during the electronic mining of currency. Steam has already banned blockchain games, but Ubisoft already has plans to create blockchain games with play-to-earn features. Reactions to NFT and crypto elements in games has been mixed; while the systems are popular in some areas of internet culture, a recent Dead by Daylight NFT experiment did not go down well with fans.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.