Announced earlier this month alongside the new iPhone 13, the Apple Watch Series 7 is now available to preorder.

Apple Watch Series 7 Preorder

Starting at $399, the Apple Watch Series 7 comes out October 15, which is next week, and you can ensure your get your hands on one, or rather, one around your wrist, by preordering now.

Apple Watch Series 7 Features

The Apple Watch Series 7 was revealed during last month's September Apple Event, with the most obvious improvement coming via a larger screen. The Apple Watch Series 7 has a 20% larger screen than its predecessor, and can now fit an entire touch-sensitive keyboard on the watch face itself. The watches come in 41mm and 45mm sizes, a slight increase over the Apple Watch Series 6.

The display on the Apple Watch Series 7 is always-on, and promises to be 20% brighter than the previous Apple Watch. In spite of increased brightness, the Series 7 claims the same 18 hours of battery life, as well as "33% faster charging" than the Series 6.

There's a Blood Oxygen and ECG app standard with the Apple Watch Series 7, "High and low heart rate notifications" and "Irregular heart rhythm notifications," according to the official Apple Watch Series 7 website.

There's quite a lot to like about the new Apple Watch Series 7 and I'm considering ordering one for myself, because I like watches and haven't yet equipped myself with a cool and trendy smart watch. There are a lot more features, like increased scratch and water resistance, that make it appealing.

Seth Macy is Executive Editor, IGN Commerce, and just wants to be your friend. You can find him hosting the Nintendo Voice Chat podcast.

After many, many leaks, Rockstar Games has officially announced the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, comprising Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas. The updated games will be released for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC (via the Rockstar Games Launcher) "later this year". Mobile ports will follow next year.

All three games "will feature across-the-board upgrades including graphical improvements and modern gameplay enhancements for all three titles, while still maintaining the classic look and feel of the originals." More details will follow in the coming weeks. Rockstar has not yet confirmed if the games will be released as a single package, as individual titles, or both.

The existing versions of all three games will be removed from digital storefronts next week. Rockstar also announced that the games will come to iOS and Android in the first half of 2022.

The remasters have been rumored for months and there have been several major leaks including references to the trilogy in Rockstar’s own game launcher, leaked logos and achievements, and the trilogy was even rated in South Korea.

The remasters are being released as part of GTA 3's 20th anniversary, and GTA Online will also be updated with anniversary-themed events, clothing, liveries and more. Rockstar teases that there will be surprises in store for GTA Online players, "including the upcoming possibility of some unusual activity occurring in and around Southern San Andreas…"

On top of the anniversary celebrations, Rockstar also teased what seems to be a new GTA Online expansion for this year, saying that "some well-known contacts and familiar friends need your help in expanding their “legit business” — with many more surprises soon to be revealed!"

Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas are considered some of the best games in the series. As with all Grand Theft Auto games, each title focuses on the life and crimes of the main character trying to make it big in a fictional city in the United States.

Vice City for example is based on Miami while San Andreas is an amalgam of southern California and Nevada. Check out all our reviews for GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas.

The trilogy will hopefully tide fans over as Rockstar readies a next-gen version of Grand Theft Auto 5 for PlayStation 5, which has been delayed until 2022. Though folks seem eager for news of Grand Theft Auto 6 more than anything.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Muppet Haunted Mansion premieres Oct. 8 on Disney+.

Shocking as it may be, The Muppets, as a performing troupe, have never had their own Halloween special. Yes, it’s an entertainment tragedy, but one that is thankfully finally remedied with the Disney+ original, Muppets Haunted Mansion.

The one-hour special includes all the familiar faces, from Kermit to Miss Piggy and everyone in between, but the narrative belongs to Gonzo the Great (Dave Goelz), with Pepe the King Prawn (Bill Barretta) handling side-crustacean duties. That dynamic is truly the perfect alignment of weirdo to holiday, giving the fearless daredevil a tailor-made opportunity to show off his nerves of steel and reinforce some core Muppet tenets about the importance of family, be it found or biological.

Set on Halloween night, Gonzo and Pepe skip out on Kermit (Matt Vogel) and Miss Piggy’s (Eric Jacobson) big party to accept the challenge of staying overnight in the creepy mansion of famed magician The Great MacGuffin on the 100th anniversary of his disappearance. Since Gonzo has proven over and over again that he has no fear, he figures the night will be a lark. Pepe, not so much.

The mansion itself is modeled on the much-loved theme park ride, The Haunted Mansion, with The Muppets slipping into the iconic characters found inside and outside of the ride. The swaps are pretty inspired, from Fozzie as the Hatbox bear (including teeth!) to Piggy as the disembodied crystal ball head of Madame Pigota. Writers Kirk Thatcher, Kelly Younger, and long-time Muppet performer Bill Barretta have crafted a framing device, and sequences within, that make the mash-up feel delightfully natural and never forced. The Muppet wit is particularly funny and ranges from the extremely clever to the familiar, like Waldorf and Statler as heckling ghosts inside the ride carts, down to the incredibly silly; wait for the goat.

There are also three new original songs that lend themselves nicely to the Mansion theme, with some gifted pun usage. They may not be instant classics on par with recent efforts for the last two Muppet films, but they are a lot of fun and utilize the depth and breadth of the Muppet bench to bring them to life, which is always a plus. A great Muppet special is one that honors all eras of the felt performers, and this special does that by including some deep cut appearances like the ghosts in the mansion (going back to The Muppet Show days) to newbies like Walter and Joe the Weasel.

As for the humans, Will Arnett is so perfectly attuned to performing with the Muppets, I’m kinda mad that he hasn’t been a fixture in these projects for years. Taraji P. Henson is also having a great time as resident black widow ghost, Constance Hatchaway. Her side story goes on a little too long in parts but her storyline will appeal to the hardcore Haunted Mansion fans. The rogue’s gallery of other human talent are basically relegated to very small cameos but that means the focus can remain on Gonzo and the other Muppets, as it should.

The Muppets have had some bumpy years under their Disney ownership with the company trying to reinvent them, or modernize them for contemporary audiences. What they keep forgetting is that The Muppets at their best are timeless, and this special captures much of that spirit because of the performance and writing mix of Goelz and Baretta. The old-timers of the current Muppet crew, they convey the right blend of Henson heart and silliness that makes this offering one worthy of a yearly watch.

The Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio is a spiritual successor/wild-child offshoot to Microsoft’s Surface Book line. But unlike its convertible predecessor, the Laptop Studio doesn’t have a detachable display. Instead, the Laptop Studio shares its lineage – and name – with the Microsoft Surface Studio, a creative-friendly desktop that utilizes an easel-like hinge to let you draw directly on its massive display. It’s a fitting moniker, as the Laptop Studio features a similar screen, which sits in one of three positions, allowing you to illustrate, prototype, and write with the Slim pencil.

While that touchscreen will make the Laptop Studio a compelling option for creatives, it’s also powerful enough for most games. Can this laptop be your all-in-one? Let’s find out.

Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio – Design and Features

The Laptop Studio’s biggest selling point is its unique touchscreen – featuring a three-position hinge system. That hinge system allows you to use the Studio 1) as a typical laptop, 2) fold the screen down on top of the keyboard like a double-decker tablet or 3) pop into an angled tent-like position that exists (literally) between the two.

Whether or not this is the right laptop for you probably hinges on how valuable you think that, well, hinge is. Because this is an expensive computer – it starts at a base price of $1,599 and can cost up to $3,100 for its top configuration.

But the Laptop Studio is no slouch. It comes equipped with 16 or 32GBs of RAM, a customizable SSD ranging from 256GB to 2TBs, Bluetooth 5.1, Wi-Fi 6, and a high-quality 1080p front-facing camera with Windows Hello for logging in without a password. There’s a sleek, haptic touchpad below the keyboard, which registers your clicks and sends a vibration back at you – a la Apple’s MacBooks. The version I tested sported an Intel i7-11370H, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti – and retails for $2,699.

Oh, and did I mention the display? It’s a stunning 14.4-inch PixelSense display with a 2400×1600 resolution, 3:2 aspect ratio, and a velvety 120Hz refresh rate.

For a pro device aimed at creatives, I was surprised by how sparse connectivity on this laptop was. There’s no SD slot, no USB-A, no ethernet. There are just two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports (plus a USB-A port on the power brick), a headphone jack, and a proprietary charging port. If that’s aimed at keeping the device slim, you’d be forgiven for thinking the thing would be a whole lot thinner.
The Laptop Studio weighs in at a chunky 4lbs even, and it seems heavier in hand (or backpack). Microsoft has this thing measuring 0.7” thick, but I swear it feels significantly thicker. That’s on account of a strange little pedestal the laptop sits on, which acts as the cooling solution. The first thing to know about this little podium is that it looks weird – not bad exactly, but probably unlike any cooling solution you’ve seen before. And it makes the laptop feel extremely thick or extremely thin, depending on where you grip it.

But in a way, it’s also very elegant – there’s no doubt it’s pushing out serious heat (more on that later) and it does so quietly. Better yet, it also means when the screen is folded down on the keyboard, the hot air isn’t blowing directly into the display. After unboxing it, I thought this little pedestal was going to bug me, but it’s sturdy enough not to introduce any wobble whatsoever. The little overhang also produces a perfect spot for Microsoft’s Slim Pen 2 (sold separately), which slides right under the front and charges magnetically.

Besides the unconventional cooling platform, the hardware looks and feels fantastic. In many ways, it feels like a Microsoft-branded MacBook Pro, with a gorgeous light silver aluminum finish and black bezels around the screen. The keyboard is decent but a little mushy for my tastes, but it’s at least as good as anything you’ll find from Cupertino.

And like those Apple computers, the Laptop Studio is also limited in upgradeability – you won’t be able to upgrade the RAM or SSD yourself, and the proprietary charging mechanism is a bummer when the computer has perfectly serviceable USB-C ports.

Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio – Performance

Here’s the part where I reiterate that this thing isn’t exactly made for gaming. My unit came equipped with the upgraded 3050 Ti graphics – and that’s not going to blow anyone’s socks off. And an overclocked quad-core isn’t going to match many of the eight cores on the market.

I knew this going in, but I still expected the laptop to show a little more gusto when I loaded up its first test – the not-exactly ravaging Diablo 2: Resurrected. I popped all the sliders to the highest setting and watched as my frame rate quickly dropped to around 30 fps.

The Studio’s cooling system did what it could, but it came with the side-effect of blowing uncomfortably hot air onto my mouse hand. The keyboard was also uncomfortably (but not unbearably) hot. I dropped the settings to High and could achieve around mid 30 fps, while Medium dropping things down to “High” got me in the 40s, and Medium had me closer to 60.

To reap the benefits of that 120Hz screen, I had to sadly forego the graphical enhancements entirely and watch my Sorceress transform into a chunky mess of 21-year-old polygons. But at 100+ fps, even the ancient graphics looked surprisingly smooth. Still, the Laptop Studio’s pixel density does leave a little to be desired. At just 201ppi, it has fewer pixels-per-inch than both the Surface Pro and Surface Book (267 and 260, respectively) or on a similarly-priced MacBook Pro (227ppi).

During our benchmarks, The Studio Laptop held up pretty well. It held 72 fps during Hitman 3, 43 in Borderlands 3, and 48 in Total War: Three Kingdoms. That’s not quite the performance you’ll squeeze out of a RTX 2080 Super or RTX 3060, but it’s pretty close. The Studio Laptop outperforms the Razer Blade Stealth OLED and comes within swinging distance of the 3060-equipped Acer Predator Triton 300 SE.

Unsurprisingly, the battery didn’t last long while gaming – though you’ll want to stay plugged in for maximum performance anyway. Should you ever need to game without access to an outlet, though, I found that merely 11 minutes of gameplay at ultra settings dropped the battery from 100 to 80%.

That said, for everything outside of gaming, the battery was phenomenal. It took 10 hours and 32 minutes to run the battery from 100% to 0 while running a series of productivity-focused tasks with PCMark 10. That’s longer than any gaming laptop we’ve ever tested and nearly double the battery life you’ll find on the Razer Blade 15 Advanced Edition. Its closest competitor is probably something like the M1 Macbook, which was able to average around 12 hours of moderate-to-heavy usage in our tests.

And that battery life extends beyond productivity tasks. Even during intense creative processes, the Studio Laptop stayed cool enough and had enough power to make multi-layer photoshops and large illustrations a cinch. Unfortunately, serious video editing is probably still a bit out of reach.

In Stage mode (the tent-looking one), the bottom of the screen “latches” with magnets. But it feels surprisingly secure, and as I drew Wartortle after Wartortle, I was impressed with the palm detection. However, Stage mode feels too upright for my drawing style, and I didn’t find it much more valuable than just the plain-old laptop mode for drawing (or watching movies, for that matter). In every formation besides tablet mode, I felt myself constantly hunched over or manipulating the screen in weird directions.

The speakers are loud but not particularly bass-heavy. They’re located under the keyboard, which means your audio quality often depends on where your hands are and the orientation of your display. Even in ideal conditions, I found the speakers a bit tepid – putting the monitor in Stage (tent) mode made it worse, and folding the screen down into tablet mode made the sound downright awful.

Navigation on the laptop is excellent. The touchpad is phenomenal – as good as anything out there – boasting a considerable size and pleasing haptics. The pressure sensitivity, haptics, and general feel of the Slim Pen 2 are also great (and you can navigate by touch – though I don’t recommend it for gaming). Though, after you’ve spent nearly $3,000 on this laptop, forking out another $130 for the Slim Pen 2 feels a bit insulting. Still, I can tell already the Laptop Studio will be a hit with creatives – combining a best-of-both-worlds approach to illustration and productivity work.

Purchasing Guide

The Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio is available from Microsoft starting at $1,599 with models ranging up to $3,099.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard has become the first game in the series to ship over ten million copies, Capcom confirms.

As announced in a press release, Capcom says that Resident Evil 7 has set new milestones for the company as it becomes the first game in the series to ship over ten million units globally. It's worth pointing out that shipped copies are those sent to retailers, as opposed to sold copies, which have been bought by players.

According to the studio, the game's impressive figures have largely been down to the "promotion of digital sales" and "synergies" with the series' latest installment, Resident Evil: Village, which launched in May.

The latest news from the studio comes after a string of successes for the series. In 2020, the Resident Evil brand set new records for Capcom after it became the first in its history to exceed 100 million units sold worldwide. That being said, it doesn't look like slowing down either. Capcom announced in July that its quarterly net sales and profits had reached record-high levels in a statement that contributed part of that success to the release of Resident Evil: Village.

Looking forward to the future, Capcom fans are likely to see the studio's focus shift toward PC software. Capcom's COO Haruhiro Tsujimoto shared that the success of its PC software has been "driving global sales" and that he thinks "PCs will be the next big thing after smartphones." Part of this decision, revealed Tsujimoto, is in response to an increase in digital sales from the likes of older titles such as Resident Evil 7.

Resident Evil 7's return to the series' roots with an emphasis on horror, exploration, and atmosphere was widely praised by fans. IGN reviewed Resident Evil 7 upon release scoring the game a 7.7/10 and commending it for taking the series in a "bold new direction".

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