The reason is D23 — or the D23 Expo, the Walt Disney Company’s own convention, which the corporation holds in Anaheim, California, every two years. (The D stands for Disney, and the 23 comes from 1923, the year Walt Disney founded the company.) In 2017, D23 runs from July 14-16, exactly one weekend before and just a hundred miles northwest of San Diego Comic-Con. But now we live in a world where the Walt Disney Company owns the two biggest franchises on the movie release calendar: the Marvel Cin

For Mike Yeung the time came back in June about a month after graduating High School. To say that the expectations for Phoenix1 coming into Rift Rivals were low would be the understatement of the year. But that was before we had any idea just how strong NA would be at Rift Rivals, and just how bad Europe would look. In just his fourth week as a Phoenix1 starter, and his first ever international event, Mike Yeung won the Rift Rivals Group Stage Most Valuable Player award. And not just among P1 fa

On Thursday, Team Liquid, in partnership with League of Legends’ statistician Tim Sevenhuysen, announced the creation of a new set of tools aimed at aiding professional players, coaches and analysts. The tool is called Shadow LOL and will include a number of features specifically designed to gather, organize and implement data throughout the competitive League of Legends landscape. The tool will do things like analyze trends within a specific player’s champion pool, provide in-depth and customiz

It’s once again time for the Overwatch World Cup. This will be the second time that Blizzard has held the event, which pits national teams from all over the world against each other to determine which country will be the Overwatch World Champion. The tournament’s qualifier is broken up into groups of four with the top two advancing after the Group Stage. Shanghai, China Group A Group B Group A Group B 1. ArgentinaJuly 14, 2 a.m. EST – 8 a.m. ESTChina vs RomaniaHong Kong vs NorwayFrance vs Argent

Splatoon 2’s most exciting characters are Marina and Pearl, the new Splatfest hosts and stars of the band Off the Hook. While Marina is categorically beloved, Pearl has proven polarizing — really, really polarizing. Splatoon has always been a series about choosing sides, and picking between the idols has become the game’s first battle. Even Pearl and Marina are inclined to dig into each other; such is the way of the Splatfest. There’s even a pretty rad remix of Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” featurin

It’s been one month (exactly) since E3 2017 and we just got this earworm out of our heads, and now you recreate Super Mario Odyssey’s trailer in Dark Souls 3. “Don’t know why, but goddamn if it wasn’t a bunch of fun,” the YouTuber says. Dark Souls fans are probably thinking “Wait a minute …” Yeah, no, you can’t jump up high in the air as those jazzy lyrics say over and over. And that’s the source of the trailer’s best joke (1:46 in the video) — which of course only true players of Dark Souls w

Doomfist’s rare skins, priced at a very reasonable 75 credits each, give the new Offense hero a pleasing palette of nature tones. Cheetah and Painted, Doomfist’s epic skins, are a pretty overt nod to the Talon tactician’s African roots. If you’re looking for something a bit more spiritual, Doomfist’s Avatar and Spirit skins re-imagine the big man as something much closer to a God. These skins are a departure from the core fantasy of a Talon strategist, but the bold colors and totemic fist are ve

Someone broke into my apartment and stole my video game collection exactly four days later. The tyranny of a collectionI was never not collecting video games. I worked at my store selling video games, and I found alphabetizing the shelves to be a very comforting exercise. It felt good, in a way, but it was more of an obligation than a way to heal. “After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it.”I stopped buying old video games by the time I was 30.

Dark Horse comics announced the latest miniseries in its series of Tomb Raider comics today, Tomb Raider: Survivor’s Crusade, from a brand new creative team. “Lara Croft has unfinished business,” the publisher said in a press release. “After facing Trinity in Siberia [in Rise of the Tomb Raider], she’s driven to unravel the mystery behind her father’s death. It looks like Survivor’s Crusade will pick up that thread, with writing partners Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly penning scripts, Ashley A

Not the product.”It’s a simple philosophy, but one that Ian Hetherington — co-founder of one of Sony’s most successful publishing studios in the 1990s — holds dear. Psygnosis pushed millions in product and its best-known titles include Lemmings and the PlayStation-defining success, Wipeout. During the 1980s, Hetherington helped run finances at Imagine Software — a BBC documentary chronicled its downfall. For Hetherington, the failure of Imagine highlighted that to take the games industry to the

Nintendo Switch will receive its first video streaming service tomorrow, July 13. It may not be one you’ve ever heard of, though — it’s Niconico, a unique Japanese video platform that’s huge in its home country. Niconico is best known for its livestreams, which fans can leave comments on that then appear on the video itself. The Japanese eShop will be the exclusive home to the free Niconico app for now, but Switch owners worldwide can make a Japanese account to download it and start watching som

Next week’s Pokémon Go Fest may be the game’s first live event, but the Chicago-based experience will have special rewards for players worldwide. New details on the Fest from Niantic reveal that every Pokémon Go player will have a chance to unlock bonuses all weekend long. Those who bought tickets to play Pokémon Go in Chicago’s Grant Park will have the best rewards to look forward to, of course. If they catch as many Pokémon as they can during the challenge windows, they’ll be able to extend th

Nintendo released an update for Arms on Tuesday that added new characters, new arms, a new stage and a new mode to the Nintendo Switch fighting game. The update, version 2.0, also comes with some good news for competitive players. With the addition of the Hedlok Scramble versus mode, players can also fight as Hedlok if they grab a special item. Arms players have complained about Snake Park’s inclusion in ranked matches, arguing that the stage’s size and fast-moving hoverboards led to unbalanced

Zombie gameplay comes to XCOM 2 with War of the Chosen, the expansion launching next month on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One. In War of the Chosen, the player will make and manage alliances with three Earth-based factions. Fortunately for the player, the Lost do not use cover, nor do they have ranged attacks. Then there’s the Assassin, an agent of the Chosen, the leadership of the occupying authority in XCOM 2’s story. War of the Chosen comes to XCOM 2 on Aug. 29.

The video’s called “Pokémon Mystery File: A world of Pokémon you don’t know,” and it’s a compilation of some of the most bizarre footage from various Pokémon games. Among them are Celebi’s appearance in Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver; the mysterious man from Pokémon Sun and Moon; and the Distortion World from Pokémon Platinum. Each one’s an odd or inexplicable occurrence, parts of the Pokémon lore that remain confusing. Is it possessing humans?”The video ends with a group of Unown, one of the

Astro Gaming, makers of the highly-regarded A-series audio headsets and Mixamp console peripherals, are being acquired by Logitech. The brand will fall underneath their Logitech G brand of gaming peripherals. “[Astro} is a perfect complement to Logitech G’s focus on PC gaming and we couldn’t be more excited,” said Jordan Reiss, co-founder and president of Astro. The whole team at Astro has always held Logitech and Logitech G products in the highest regard, so I’m ecstatic we are joining forces.”

Several YouTube videos of Phoenix Wright spinoff Dai Gyakuten Saiban, featuring English subtitles translated by fans, were removed by Capcom in June. Dai Gyakuten Saiban takes place in the late 19th century towards the end of Japan’s Meiji period. The videos remained on YouTube, gaining popularity with series fans, until Capcom pulled them down on June 25 of this year. Some fans argued that the videos should have been protected by YouTube’s fair use guidelines, since O and Garbage captured the f

The Hamburg, Germany-based publisher worked on a companion book for the game, The Last Guardian: An Extraordinary Story, which was released last month. Future Press had only published game guides to this point, but decided that this long-anticipated experience from a beloved game designer required something special. “we were determined to create a book for Fumito Ueda’s next game”All through that long period, Future Press and Sony kept the lines of communication open. The text contains explorati

The team behind indie horror game Slender: The Arrival and free-running adventure Valley have a brand new game out later this month on Steam Early Access. It’s called Citadel: Forged With Fire and it looks like a surprisingly ambitious, fantasy-themed, online sandbox role-playing game. The first gameplay trailer shows player-versus-environment and player-versus-player action on foot, horseback and flying broomstick. Blue Isle aims to create a true sandbox game, freeing players to become a wizard

The Destiny 2 beta doesn’t go live until next week, but you can prepare for the party by preloading the beta starting July 13, publisher Activision confirmed today to Polygon. While Activision will eventually open up the Destiny 2 beta to all PS4 and Xbox One owners, you’ll only be able to preload it if you have a code. The Destiny 2 beta will be available first for people who have pre-ordered the game on PS4, starting at 10 a.m. PDT next Tuesday, July 18. Two days afterward, at 10 a.m. on Frida