Showtime has announced production on the Halo TV series is "about to begin" while using the time to announce 3 new cast members that have joined the ranks.

The upcoming Halo TV show will now also star Danny Sapani (from Doctor Who and Star Wars: The Last Jedi) who will play Jabob Keys who is a "dedicated military man". Olive Gray (from Fleabag and Eastenders) will play UNSC Commander Dr. Miranda Keyes while Charlie Murphy (from Peaky Blinders) will play Makee, an orphan raised by the Covenant.

Halo won't hit TV screens until at least 2021, whereby that time Microsoft will have its next-gen Xbox Scarlett console out and hopefully, a next-gen Halo game. Until then, get hyped for the new Halo TV series which is now finally, in production.

The rumors of a next-gen Superman game have been flying around for a while now, but it seems like something is brewing when it comes to Kal-El and getting his own game.

Now we have an industry insider that has revealed a slew of details on Warner Bros. plans to release an open-world Superman game and that it has been actively trying to make it happen since 2013, the year Man of Steel was released.

The new details add that one of the Superman games pitched to WB was an open-world game similar to how Spider-Man ended up on the PS4 recently. It would've had a Metropolis that would've been huge, and featured a bunch of infamous villains ripped directly from the comic book pages of DC.

GIGABYTE hasn't had an AORUS-branded Radeon since the Radeon RX 580 (they skipped the RX 590) so it is high time that we get a custom AORUS-branded Radeon.

The latest in AORUS' custom line up appears to be a custom Radeon RX 5700 XT in a huge triple-fan, triple-slot beast. We are expecting AORUS to release the custom Radeon RX 5700 XT sometime in the next month or so, perfect for the holidays and the latest games out like Red Dead Redemption 2.

In a statement from 'GBT-Brian' who is a GIGABYTE Community Manager, he explained: "You guys asked for it and we are delivering! Going into mass production next week and should be available 2-3 weeks after. I'll post more pics as soon as the product hits our warehouse".

ASRock had a solid first entry into the world of custom Navi graphics cards with its Radeon RX 5700 XT Taichi OC+ which I reviewed here, but now the company has announced its upcoming Radeon RX 5700 Phantom Gaming series family.

The new ASRock Radeon RX 5700 Phantom Gaming series graphics cards will offer up custom versions of both the Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700, each with overclocked GPUs and 8GB of GDDR6.

Starting with the flagship Radeon RX 5700 XT Phantom Gaming series graphics card we have the Navi 10 GPU at 1690/1835/1945MHz for base/game/boost GPU clocks, respectively. ASRock's second Phantom Gaming series card in the Radeon RX 5700 will have 1610/1725/1750MHz for base, game, and boost GPU clocks respectively.

Since we first broke the story about the possible upcoming fate of Silicon Valley-based retail chain Fry's Electronics, not much has changed within the stores. Shelves are still empty with what limited product they have in stock being spread out across as many isles as possible.

After our story, numerous other news outlets including CBS, San Jose Mercury News, and PC Gamer have begun to speculate, as well as obtain denials from Fry's Electronics spokesperson Manuel Valerio that the company has no immediate plans to go out of business. Even though it is closing its Palo Alto store, the company insists it has no plans to close its other 33 stores in nine states.

One store manager commented to us that they are clearing out the existing product to make room for new vendors. We specifically asked what vendor was replacing copies of Microsoft Windows, which at that point, the manager refused to make any additional comments. On recent store visits to Bay Area and Southern California stores, not only have we seen little to no new products arriving, but employees have told us that what new products we are seeing are mostly inter-store transfers.

Modern Warfare's new battle pass offering will be available next month, Activision confirms.

Activision has shrugged off Call of Duty lootboxes for good, replacing them with a new battle pass business model for Modern Warfare. The battle pass has two versions: a free version that's available to everyone, and the paid version. The only difference with the paid version is you can earn CoD Points to spend on cosmetics in-game. Both versions will let gamers earn new weapons and attachments by playing the game, as well as new skins via seasonal events and rankings.

We don't know how much it'll cost just yet, but we do know it's coming sometime in December to coincide with the busy holiday season. "This includes our new in-game system for Modern Warfare which begins in December, slightly later than originally planned," Activision-Blizzard CFO Dennis Durkin said in a recent earnings call.

Thanks to our friends at Universal Sony Home Entertainment, we have ten Blu-ray copies of the new release action blockbuster 'Fast & Furious: Hobbs and Shaw' to give away!

Ever since hulking lawman Hobbs (Johnson), a loyal agent of America's Diplomatic Security Service, and lawless outcast Shaw (Statham), a former British military elite operative, first faced off in 2015's Furious 7, the duo have swapped smack talk and body blows as they've tried to take each other down. But when cyber-genetically enhanced anarchist Brixton (Idris Elba) gains control of an insidious bio-threat that could alter humanity forever - and bests a brilliant and fearless rogue MI6 agent (Vanessa Kirby), who just happens to be Shaw's sister - these two sworn enemies will have to partner up to bring down the only guy who might be badder than themselves. Hobbs & Shaw blasts open a new door in the Fast universe as it hurtles action across the globe, from Los Angeles to London and from the toxic wasteland of Chernobyl to the lush beauty of Samoa.

To go into the running to win a prize, post this article to your social media profiles, send your postal address to ben at TweakTown dot com and correctly answer the following question before the competition closes on 15 November.

Star Wars movies will be put on hold as Disney shifts towards shows on its streaming platform.

After Rise of Skywalker releases this December, Disney won't have a new Star Wars film for a while. Company CEO Bob Iger confirmed the news in a recent investors call: "Star Wars XI, which comes out this December, will be the last of the Skywalker Saga. We'll go into a hiatus for a few years before the next Star Wars feature. There'll be a lot of creative activity in the interim."

The news comes after Game of Thrones showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff scrapped plans for their new Star Wars trilogy. There's also rumors that Rian Johnson's planned extended universe trilogy, which had a December 2024 release attached to it, has been shut down by Lucasfilm. Nothing's been confirmed though.

Sony's PlayStation services have come a long way. But they need to go farther to compete with Xbox services' tremendous value. Sony isn't ready to take on Game Pass on its own turf just yet, though.

Sony has no plans to bring its big first-party PS4 exclusives over to PlayStation Now at launch, SIE President Jim Ryan confirms. This could be a mistake. Right now PS Now is much more attractive then it used to be--it lets subscribers download and play titles offline, for instance, and only costs $10 a month--but Game Pass is still the ultimate value in gaming, not just because of its breadth of offered titles, but because every first-party Xbox game releases comes to Game Pass too.

"The nature and scale of some of the first party games that we are making leads us to think that, right now, it's better to spend energy on making sure that the launch of those games is a massive entertainment event," Jim Ryan told GamesIndustry.biz.

Ubisoft Spain just put up a mysterious Splinter Cell tweet...is it for a new game?

There's been rumblings about a new Splinter Cell for a while now. Back in May, Ubisoft creative director said a new Splinter Cell game was in dev. Nothing came of this, though, and Ubisoft didn't reveal a new game at E3 2019.

However, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot made it clear the series was far from dead.

Remember Desert Bus, that joke game made by Penn and Teller where you drive a commuter bus from Arizona to Las Vegas for eight droll and ultra-monotonous hours? Now we have the modern equivalent.

AMC Games' debut title is something any frequent flyer can appreciate. It's called Airplane Mode, and it's a simulator that recreates the thrills and excitement of a six-hour plane ride in economy seating. No Wi-Fi? Check. Constant droning hum of the craft? Check. Crying, sneezing, coughing, and other human noises? Check. The only thing's missing is the tight cramped spaces, leg cramps, tight backs, and having to pee every 10 minutes.

Players (well I use that term lightly, you're really not playing) will sit through the entire flight in real-time. Luckily the devs have given you some tools to whittle away the hours. You can do Sudoku, crosswords, read a book in real-time, and watch some royalty-free programming from the 1930s like Georges Melies' classic Voyage to the Moon.

As outlined in Jason Schreier's book Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, following Stormlands' cancellation in 2012, the then-independent Obsidian Entertainment was put in a pressure cooker. Obsidian had to fire nearly half of Stormlands' devs to reduce spending. Soon their cash would run out and they needed new projects and new funding from publishers.

Pillars of Eternity changed all of that and saved the company from a bleak, uncertain future. With the advent of Kickstarter, Obsidian could eliminate the middelman publisher and connect directly with fans. Obsidian could finally make a game everyone wanted to play, and fans could pay Obsidian directly to fund the experience. Obsidian raised over $3.9 million for Pillars of Etenity and for a time their money woes were over.

Although it was an arduous process making Pillars of Eternity, the game was popular enough to warrant a sequel, which was also funded via crowdsourcing (it raised $4.4 million).

Rockstar Games is ramping up its next-gen games development teams for big projects like Grand Theft Auto 6.

Like other devs, Rockstar is preparing for next-gen consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Project Scarlett. The company is hiring for a new animation systems programmer that'll design character animations for huge next-gen games like GTA 6.

"We are a global team of programmers and researchers who collaborate on pushing the boundaries of character animation on next generation hardware," reads the job listing.

Thanks to our friends at Disney Home Entertainment, we have five 4K Blu-ray copies of the new release blockbuster 'The Lion King' to give away!

Simba idolizes his father, King Mufasa, and takes to heart his own royal destiny on the plains of Africa. But not everyone in the kingdom celebrates the new cub's arrival. Scar, Mufasa's brother -- and former heir to the throne -- has plans of his own. The battle for Pride Rock is soon ravaged with betrayal, tragedy and drama, ultimately resulting in Simba's exile. Now, with help from a curious pair of newfound friends, Simba must figure out how to grow up and take back what is rightfully his.

To go into the running to win a prize, post this article to your social media profiles, send your postal address to ben at TweakTown dot com and correctly answer the following question before the competition closes on 15 November.

Blizzard is experimenting with an awful-sounding trading system for Diablo IV, and they need to just kill it right out of the gate.

Let me preface this by saying I traded a ridiculous amount of items in Diablo II: LoD on Battle.net. In fact, I almost traded more than I actually played. There was something extremely addictive about the constantly-shifting economy that reset with every ladder wipe. It forced you to pay attention, to communicate, and to be opportunistic when you wanted specific gear. Sometimes you got lucky and found a great deal, other times you haggled. It was an actual skill that you had to learn to get far in the game--grinding was never enough.

A lot of those things will be eradicated with Blizzard's new trading system for Diablo IV. Nothing's set in stone just yet, and I hope this simply doesn't take off.

Sony Interactive Entertainment recently patented another game cartridge, igniting speculation of PS5 game carts and the rebirth of the Vita. But don't get too excited just yet. We've been here before.

LetsGoDigital spotted an interesting game cartridge patent from Sony. We can't actually find the patent ourselves for further investigation, but outlet says the patent was filed in June of this year and updated this month. Now everyone thinks Sony is making a new Vita handheld, or that the PS5 will run on game carts. Or, more ridiculously, that the PS5 will be a kind of handheld-console hybrid.

None of these are likely. In fact, the patent is probably for Sony's Toio line of kid's toys, not actual PlayStation hardware.

As we predicted, Activision-Blizzard is infusing cross-play into its biggest games. Diablo IV will be one of them, and the game itself will benefit tremendously from the move.

Gaming's biggest barriers are falling. Thanks to cross-play, no longer will console and PC gamers be segregated into walled gardens. This platform mingling is a calculated business decision predicated on one thing: Further monetizing the billion-dollar live service market.

Like the Modern Warfare reboot, Diablo IV will also embrace cross-play. "We're very excited about cross-play. There are technical details and details to work through with the first parties, but it's our goal to get to cross-play," Blizzard co-founder Allen Adham told The Telegraph.

Despite making hundreds of millions of dollars from microtransactions every quarter, Take-Two CEO says monetization doesn't come first.

Take-Two Interactive runs a pretty profitable business thanks to microtransactions. In its recent Q2'2020 earnings the company pulled in $318.38 million from mTX and DLC, driven strongly by NBA 2K games, GTA Online, and Borderlands 3. But Take-Two isn't solely focused on making money from live services--microtransactions only come second to making a great game.

"We only think about monetization after we've already focused on that engagement," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told the Hollywood Reporter.

Ubisoft plans to infuse cross-play into its highest-earning PVP games, company CEO Yves Guillemot says.

Cross-play is the next big frontier for publishers. It's perfect for digital-first companies like Ubisoft, Activision-Blizzard, EA and Take-Two Interactive that make billions every year from live services. Cross-play is one of the most potent engagement boosters out there because it lets PS4, Xbox One, and PC gamers play together in a shared environment. The more people who are playing, the more likely they are to continue playing. And the more gamers play, the more they pay for microtransactions, battle passes, and DLC.

Ubisoft understands this dynamic well. That's why the company wants to push cross-play into online-based megaton titles like Rainbow Six: Siege and even The Division 2.

In its current state, Diablo IV will be a very, very grindy game that won't let you respec or reset skills.

Blizzard has a few clear-cut goals with Diablo IV. The sequel will be bloody and dark like Diablo II, it'll have Diablo III's core mechanics with tons of DII staples like runes, and most importantly for Blizzard, it'll be a never-ending game with tons of stuff to do. A big part of that last bit centers around near-infinite builds thanks to Diablo IV's huge skill customization options.

Oddly enough, Diablo IV won't have skill respeccing. That means you can't just swig a potion or read a book to reset your skills, hearkening back to old-school Diablo II. Any mistakes you make setting up your skills will be permanent. You can only move forward by leveling up more or acquiring skill tomes from events, quests, and in-game activities.