Jabari Banks has been cast as the main character, Will, in the upcoming Fresh Prince of Bel-Air revival.

Will Smith personally surprised Banks with the news that the West Philadelphia native will be stepping into the shoes of the iconic 90s character first played by Smith.

Banks' Will character will essentially be the same as the Will Smith played from 1990 to 1996, but this revival will be a "contemporary reimagining" of the original series.

Looked at his kingdom, he was finally there. To sit on Will Smith's throne as the Prince of Bel-Air. 👑 The legacy continues with Jabari Banks! pic.twitter.com/sDMJqYEOLC

— Peacock (@peacockTV) August 31, 2021

"it is an absolute pleasure to meet you, to be on [this video call] with you, and from the deepest parts of my heart, I want to say congratulations to you," Smith told Jabari, a newcomer to the acting scene, in a special surprise video. "You have the role of Will on Bel-Air."

As you can see in the video post above, Banks says he's "so ready" to take on the role. He recalls his father showing him an article about the Bel-Air reboot, telling him to audition for the role. "That's not how auditions work," Banks told his Dad, but two months later, he was actually auditioning for the show. Now, the starring role is his.

"This is a dream come true," Banks told Smith. "The way the show has impacted me and my life, it's incredible to hear you say that."

Smith told Banks he has a fantastic road ahead of him and that he looks forward to "being an asset for you in this process as you build out your life and your career."

News of Banks' casting comes just a few weeks after it was revealed that the Bel-Air reboot has taken on new showrunners and that the show is taking a different creative direction. It will now be a "broad-skewing network-style show" in contrast to the original "edgy, premium series" the first showrunners wanted to deliver.

Peacock says the reboot will take place in modern-day America and "dive deeper into the inherent conflicts, emotions, and biases that were impossible to fully explore in a 30-minute sitcom format, while still delivering swagger and nods to the original show."

Read more about the show's new direction while waiting for it to premiere on Peacock and then check out how the recent Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reunion explained why Janet Hubert left the show.

Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

Konami is phasing out online support for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and Metal Gear Online on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 beginning today.

A post on Konami's website says that Metal Gear Solid V's purchase system on PS3 and 360 are shutting down. All DLC for Metal Gear Online will no longer be available for purchase beginning on November 30.

The full shutdown of online play won't happen until May 31, 2022. Konami does confirm, of course, that the main game will still be playable offline on the impacted systems.

Metal Gear Solid V includes two multiplayer modes. One is Metal Gear Online, a PvP mode that supports up to 16 players hunting each other down with the game's stealth and espionage mechanics across three game modes. The other is an online version of the game's base-building feature, which can be used to get items and money for the main game.

The Phantom Pain released back in 2015. At the time, IGN called it a masterpiece in our Metal Gear Solid 5 review, saying, "The Phantom Pain doesn’t just respect my intelligence as a player, it expects it of me, putting it in a league that few others occupy."

The Phantom Pain was the last game Hideo Kojima worked on with Konami before parting ways with the company. The Director's Cut of his latest game, Death Stranding, is due out on PlayStation 5 this year. The legendary creator is also writing a book about his creative process.

As for other players still making use of their PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the PS3 and 360 are losing GTA Online on December 16 of this year. This lines up closely with GTA V's launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X.

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

South Korea's National Assembly passed a bill today challenging Apple and Google's current app store policies, with implications potentially impacting both companies on a global scale.

As spotted first by The Wall Street Journal, the law is an amendment to South Korea's Telecommunications Business Act. The new piece of legislation prevents major platforms like Apple and Google from banning app developers from using built-in payment systems, meaning app developers have the freedom to use their own payment systems.

The new law also forbids store owners from reprimanding developers that use alternative payment systems than the ones available on their app storefront. Failure to comply with the new law will result in fines of up to 3% of a mobile app store owner's revenue in the country.

While this legislation only impacts South Korea, the legislation could have a massive impact on the tech giants across the globe. Both tech giants have been subject to criticism for their app store policies, with countries looking to crack down on both. Earlier this month, the US Senate introduced the Open App Markets Act, which would also developers to use their own payment systems if passed and sign into law.

Apple and Google have also been subjected to various lawsuits here in the United States. Last year, Fortnite developer Epic Games filed a lawsuit that challenged the app store policies. The case Epic Games v. Apple was argued last May, with a federal judge currently reviewing the case with a ruling anticipated to come before the end of the year.

Recently, Apple settled a completely different class-action lawsuit with US app developers, but the trade-offs have been minimal on Apple's end and is pending approval from the court. At the same time, Google is currently being sued by 36 states plus the District of Columbia for its app store model.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

PlayStation is currently experiencing outages across all platforms and it's affecting online gaming, video services, and the PlayStation Store.

According to the official PlayStation Status tracker and IGN sister site Down Detector, PlayStation's online services are currently down and there's no word on when they will resume.

So far PlayStation's public social accounts have not addressed the outage nor provided an estimated time for a fix. So if you're trying to play something on your PlayStation system you may want to keep checking back.

IGN will update this story when there are updates regarding the outage so consider this a friendly PSA.

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

Star Trek Voyager actor, Tim Russ, is helping NASA find asteroids for an upcoming mission.

Russ played Lieutenant Commander Tuvok on Star Trek Voyager for over five years and it seems he's charting a course for space once more (kind of).

He's not exploring new planets aboard the USS Voyager this time, though, as he's helping locate asteroids in space from Earth using a special telescope, as reported by USA Today.

Russ is a citizen astronomer and he's been a part of the Los Angeles Astronomical Society for 29 years. He told USA Today that he's been a hobby astronomer for 35 years, so his history in Star Trek and what he's doing with NASA now is simply a coincidence (although it's quite a fun one).

As for why NASA needs the help of Russ and five other citizen astronomers, the answer is simple: their telescopes can find Patroclus. He received an email from Unistellar, the maker of his Unistellar eVscope and eQuinox telescope, asking if he was willing to volunteer his time and efforts to help NASA locate Patroclus, an asteroid orbiting Jupiter.

"[The Unistellar eVscope and eQuinox telescope] will simply find a starfield on its own and it will figure out where it is," Russ told USA Today. "You just punch in the object you want to go see. After you punch that in, it will move to that object on its own and it'll hold it and track it. Then, it'll layer the images for that object so the object becomes much bigger in size."

Finding Patroclus will aid NASA's upcoming October mission that will see the organization launch a probe named Lucy into space to study the Trojan Asteroids, which includes Patroclus.

"Lucy will launch in October 2021 and, with boosts from Earth's gravity, will complete a 12-year journey to eight different asteroids — a Main Belt asteroid and seven Trojans, four of which are members of 'two-for-the-price-of-one binary systems," NASA's Lucy mission overview reads. "Lucy's complex path will take it to both clusters of Trojans and give us our first close-up view of all three major types of bodies in the swarms."

"[The] Lucy mission will revolutionize our knowledge of planetary origins and the formation of the solar system," NASA's overview reads. "Lucy's discoveries will open new insights into the origins of our Earth and ourselves."

For more about asteroids, check out this story about how NASA can predict the probability of hazardous asteroid paths up to nearly 300 years from now, and then read this story about a metallic asteroid between Mars and Jupiter that has an estimated worth of $10,000 quadrillion. Check out this first look at an asteroid sample from space after that.

Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

(Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)