Xbox Game Pass Ultimate 3-Month Code $30.59 (was $50) with promo code SAVETEN (Jan. 23) See at Woot See at Amazon If you're interested in playing any of the games featured in Xbox's latest Developer Direct, you should check out Woot's deal on Game Pass Ultimate. Today only, January 23, you can get three months of Game Pass Ultimate for $30.59 (was $50) with promo code SAVETEN. After today, the price will rise to $34--still a good deal--as long as it doesn't sell out before then. This deal saves you nearly 50% compared to subscribing directly through Microsoft for $20/month ($60 for three months). If you've never shopped at Woot, you can sign in using your Amazon account. You can even start playing a new game today, as Team Ninja revealed a surprise launch for Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, a remaster of the studio's 2008 action game. Team Ninja also unveiled Ninja Gaiden 4, the long-awaited new entry in the classic series, and it'll be on Game Pass when it launches this fall. Xbox also announced release dates for several of its Spring 2025 games, Doom: The Dark Ages (May 15), Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (April 24), and South of Midnight (April 8). Xbox Game Pass Ultimate 3-Month Code $30.59 (was $50) with promo code SAVETEN (Jan. 23) Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is stackable up to 36 months, but Woot is limiting customers to four codes, meaning you can add a full year to your membership--and play all of the aforementioned games as well as hundreds more. If you bought four codes from Woot, you'd spend $122.36 on one year of Game Pass Ultimate. That's $118 less than the cost of annual membership from the Xbox Store ($240), and $78 less than the cost of four prepaid codes from Amazon ($200).When placing your order, you will need to input your shipping address, but the codes will be delivered to your email. Woot sends a shipping confirmation email with a "tracking number" shortly after your order is finalized. The tracking number is actually the 25-character key that you need to redeem on the Xbox Store. See at Woot See at Amazon Continue Reading at GameSpot

Fishing is one of many different things you can do in Sea of Thieves, and it offers a different pace of life in Rare's pirate sandbox. Once you learn the ropes of fishing, it also becomes another way to make money in Sea of Thieves and increase your Hunters Call Reputation, with some species of fish being particularly lucrative. However, learning how to fish in Sea of Thieves can take time, with there being numerous species and varieties to find and catch.

Boss battles are all the rage in most video games, with players loving the idea of taking on tough opponents in epic battles where a single mistake can be the difference between victory and defeat. Some of the best RPGs know how important this part of the game is, integrating a host of challenging fights that push players to their very limits.

Avengers: Doomsday is still more than a year away, but its not too early to learn a few of the movies secrets. For instance, Doctor Strange wont be appearing in this next Avengers film, apparently. Strange actor Benedict Cumberbatch revealed this fact during an interview with Variety, which he immediately realized might be a spoiler, before quickly overcoming his fears with a succinct, fuck it.But dont worry, Benedict, its probably not really a spoiler. After all, who could possibly be surprised at the news that not every Avenger was going to appear in the next team-up movie? The universe has (conservatively) 20 semi-important characters at this point. To fit them all in the entire film would be a montage of introductions with one line each and it would still be over three hours.Another reason it isnt a spoiler is because of what else Cumberbatch revealed in the interview: Strange will be back. In fact, hell be back more than once. For one thing, Cumberbatch has reported that his MCU character is in a lot of Avengers: Secret War, so its not like this world is done with Strange yet, he just doesnt fit into the first films plot. More importantly, Doctor Strange is also getting a third standalone film, so his Avengers absence isnt a sign of his MCU future. But even if this isnt a spoiler, it does provide some interesting insight into the potential plot of Doomsday. For instance, we certainly know that Robert Downey Jr.s Doctor Doom wont be encountering the Avengers all at once. Instead, it seems like the movies will be meting out its immense cast over the first two films.

Steamforged Games has made a name for itself in recent years by creating miniatures-heavy tabletop games out of popular action-based video games. Franchises like Dark Souls, Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and more have all been adapted with varying degrees of success into board games, card games, and even the odd role-playing game. But now the British publisher is looking a bit closer to home. Its next ambitious project will be adapting the Hearts of Iron series of grand strategy World War II games for the table, where it will compete with more established games like Twilight Imperium.Hearts of Irons latest iteration, Hearts of Iron 4, was released in 2016. It added new and dynamic ways to wage war, including intricate production queues and elastic armies. But none of its features have been more impactful than its take on alternate historical fiction, with novel new ways to fight old battles and lead classic factions to victory. Polygon sat down with the teams at Steamforged and Paradox earlier this week to discuss Hearts of Iron: The Board Game in detail, in advance of a Gamefound campaign launching today.Our interview has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.Polygon: I first met Johan Andersson, designer and producer on Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, and Hearts of Iron among others, in 2013.Later, in a preview we ran about Hearts of Iron 4 in 2016, he mentioned how on his very last day of interviews there at what would become Paradox Interactive, they invited him to join a game of Axis and Allies the classic WWII board game by the legendary Larry Harris. He sat down with the other folks there, Im sure adjacent to Fredrik Westers garage at the time, and they played through the game for hours.Of course, Axis and Allies may have inspired Hearts of Iron, but theyre not the same game. Theyre very dramatically different experiences Hearts of Iron being much wider, much richer, much more strategic and tactical in depth than Axis and Allies no shade to Mr. Harris. Now, audience appetites for these kinds of 4x games have really expanded. Arcs: Conflict and Collapse in the Reach most recently, a very avant-garde kind of design with a three-act campaign, speaks to that appetite. The Stellaris board game is another attempt. Academy Games conceit was to make a grand strategy 4x game that actually plays in two hours. Twilight Imperium, on the other hand, shed the conceit of timeliness long ago. Those fans dont care how long it is, and they revel in its complexity. They revel in its length.What are your goals going into this project? How do you bring Hearts of Iron back around and even consider fitting it into a board game box?Steve Margetson, lead designer at Steamforged: The main design goal for us is taking the experience and feeling of Hearts of Iron and condensing it down into a board game that is manageable, that feels like Hearts of Iron. Youve got the complexity there that people obviously enjoy as part of that series, but also a big key part of it was we wanted to focus more on something that you can play in a night. Its going to be a longer night, to be sure! Youre looking at three-to-four hours. But we didnt want to do a campaign game that was going to take multiple sessions or even go to the really long lengths of say Twilight Imperium, because yeah, we wanted people to get together, be able to complete World War II in an evening.One of the key pillars is this idea of either playing historically rewriting history, or reliving it. So drawing heavily on the source material there, one of the most interesting things about Hearts of Iron is the fact that you can take the Soviet Union and play them communist, but also there is the question there of, oh, what does a Soviet Union look like if they are going in a down [a] different route, like a monarchy or a theocracy for example? So that was a big, key selling point.The other thing was a big focus on politics at the table. You are allying or going to war with various countries, and that is a thing that you have to declare. Its not something thats just innate in the game. [] Youve got to justify it to your country. Youve got to put in the legwork to manage your country to make it happen.Lets focus then on Soviet Russia for a moment. Out of the box, how do you communicate to the player, Okay, you can be communists, or you can be royalists?Margetson: The way that we do that is, its taking something from the video game that weve adapted called the Focus Tree, and weve broken that down. It is a big tree, and there is a lot of material to mine and create interesting gameplay situations. Weve taken that and broken it down into ideological pairs with countries.When you begin, you are choosing from the ideologies that are available to that nation. Not every nation has every ideology available to it. In the case of our Soviet Union, if youre picking communism you have multiple, different Focus Decks that will determine the way youre scoring points and the additional political options available to you. That choice will give them a suite of options to play within their game. [] With all of these Focus Decks, they are bespoke per country, so that a German monarchy looks very different than a Soviet Union theocracy. Ultimately, Hearts of Iron fans will care about that.The other thing that you bring up is really very interesting to me. I sit down to play Axis and Allies and I know who are the Axis and who are the Allies. Its right on the box! Were starting in 1942, 1944, and its baked into the experience. So how mechanically have you created this justification for war system?Margetson: This ties into those Focus Decks. They will give you ways that youre scoring points, and essentially your overall country goal will be based on your ideology. So, looking at something like a fascist German Reich, that combination will be rewarded for trying to control as much territory as possible, just as they tried to do in history. Whereas a German Reich under a different ideology has different objectives. Perhaps it is looking to ally with a lot more people, or protect certain areas on the map, or things like that. Its one of those where we are dictating these objectives largely by your Focus Deck choice and your ideology.Peter, I turn to you and I think about the long and storied history of this franchise. Why was Steamforged the right partner to help create this expression of it?Peter Nicholson, game director at Paradox Interactive: I think theyve already answered that question in a way, and thats by correctly identifying what makes Hearts of Iron 4 unique. Its not the combat. Its not the fact that its a tactical game. Its the fact that it has these other elements on top of that, things like Focus Trees.I think if you took the first Hearts of Iron through Hearts of Iron 3, maybe even Hearts of Iron 4 at release, and said make a board game youd end up with something that probably resembles Axis and Allies very closely. That game would be one of many tactical combat-based World War II board games.It was only fairly late in Hearts of Iron 4s development midway through, four or five years ago that it really exploded both in popularity, but also in a different sort of game design where we started experimenting with things like alternate histories, the sort of expansive Focus Trees that Steves already mentioned.Of course, all of the Paradox grand strategy games have evolved out of board games themselves. Its sort of the next logical step. If you had a human being that was capable of processing this many things at once and rolling that many dice at once, you would probably end up with board games that look very similar to Hearts of Iron or Europa Universalis. So its an odd task to ask somebody to do, to take something that has evolved from a board game and then turn it back into one, but also in the process of getting there its developed its own identity, its own sort of veneer. As a board game it would be a very stodgy board game, but its developed these unique narrative paths embodied by these Focus Decks and their ideologies.What are the incentives that youre going to be putting into this campaign for potential consumers? What are the things that youre really excited about?Margetsen: The big one, and this is kind of a first for Steamforged, is that were doing a special edition at $120 and a regular edition at $65. In the past we have only tended to offer games with miniatures in our crowdfunding campaigns. Were offering both versions here because we know not everyone is going to want all those hundreds of miniatures.But these miniatures will nonetheless be an exclusive on the campaign. If you want to see those cool historical pieces on the battlefield and be pushing them around like a general, thats one of the incentives there. Eventually, the regular edition will also arrive at retail.Peter, is there anything else about Hearts of Iron, anything about Paradox that you wanted to share with me while Ive got you on the line today?Nicholson: I think actually the way that this project is being built is very similar to the way we build projects at Paradox: Lots of player feedback. I think the early access path is super interesting for Kickstarting things and getting as much player feedback as possible. Thats often how we like to design games, as close to the community as possible. Were often out there and soliciting feedback both on pre-release and release content, for example. So I think its a project thats being built in a very familiar way and its fantastic to see what Steamforged are doing with it. Im looking forward to playing.

Before modern social media, a browser extension called StumbleUpon let you click a button and see a random website. I, like many people, find myself missing this site a lot. Partly it was the serendipity of it: You'd click a button and get one of a curated collection of sites. Watch Something Wonderful is a simple website that brings that same experience to YouTube. Using the site is simple: Just click a button and you'll see a random YouTube video pulled from a curated collection. The videos are a blend of comedy and infotainmentnotably with nothing outright political. I ended up watching a half-hour vlog-style documentary about the origin of sparkling watersomething I'm glad I've seen and know I wouldn't have watched otherwise.There's not a lot of information on the website about who built it and how they choose videosit just says "A Team 7 Product" without any kind of link. This made the site feel mysterious, so naturally I had to track down the people behind it. I finally got in touch with Akhil, one of the four people behind the site. Team 7, it turns out, isn't a company or anythingit's "a team of four builders who like making fun stuff for people to use." The other three members are Ankit, Vidhatha, and Devesh.The idea for "Watch Something Wonderful," according to Akhil, came from wanting something to watch during lunch."We always watch YouTube while eating, but finding good videos takes too much time," he told me. "So we made a site that picks random videos for you." The site currently cycles between 300 videos, mostly taken from the creators' favorite playlists and the subreddit MealTimeVideos. The plan, according to Akhil, is to add a form for users to add their own videos.Is this a site I'm going to use every day for the rest of my life? No. But it's worth checking out and seeing what you find. Think of it as a website that feels like the old interneta chance to get outside your YouTube algorithm for a while and, well, stumble upon something new.

Major data breaches and cybersecurity threats are now a fact of life, the consequence of which is our personal information being exposed at some point. One of the latest significant leaks involves data from PowerSchool, a software provider for thousands of K12 school districts in the United States and Canada. The incident affected millions of users. What happened in the PowerSchool hack According to reports, PowerSchool discovered that personal information had been stolen from its customer support platform on Dec. 28, 2024. Hackers used compromised credentials to log into and export from its "Students" and "Teacher" database. BleepingComputer is reporting that the hack may have compromised the personal data of 62.4 million students and 9.5 million teachers across 6,505 school districts. The stolen data includes contact information (such as names and addresses) as well as birthdates, Social Security numbers, medical information, and grades, though the specifics vary across affected districts. PowerSchool believes that fewer than 25% of individuals had their Social Security numbers stolen. While the incident was not a ransomware attack, PowerSchool has stated that the company paid the hackers to prevent the compromised data from being published. The company began notifying affected customers on Jan. 7, 2025. What you can do if your data was stolen As I've written before, you can't take back information that's been leakedand since your data has almost inevitably been compromised at some point, the best you can do is to be on the lookout for any signs that said data is being used in a malicious way. This includes keeping tabs on your credit report and sensitive accounts for unfamiliar or fraudulent activity and considering credit monitoring and identity protection services that will notify you of anything suspicious. For those affected by this recent hack, PowerSchool is offering two years of identity protection services to all students and teachers (regardless of whether your Social Security number was compromised) through Experian. The company will also cover two years of credit monitoring for anyone over 18. According to a Jan. 17 update on the incident, PowerSchool and Experian will communicate with customersincluding parents and guardians of students under 18in the coming weeks about setting up these services. Of course, you should also follow other basic security best practices: Don't click strange links or engage with communication asking for your personal information. When in doubt, hang up the phone, delete the text, or flag the email as spam, and contact the company directly to confirm any requests. (Note that PowerSchool will not contact you directly by phone or email to request or confirm your personal information.)

Tesla has officially launched the redesigned Model Y in North America and Europe, a couple of weeks after the vehicle was announced for the Asia Pacific region. The new version isn't replacing the original Model Y, though at least not yet and Tesla is selling both of them on its website. At the moment, you can only get the long-range all wheel drive launch series variant for the new Model Y in the US with prices starting at $46,490. The launch series is a limited edition release with exclusive badging on the rear liftgate, puddle light, doorsill plate and other parts of the car.While the new Model Y retains the older version's proportions, it has rounder edges, with its smaller headlights and taillights bookending a redesigned lightbar. Inside, it has ambient lighting wrapping around most of the car, ventilated seats and a 15.4-inch touchscreen in the front. The second row seats have power recline and can fold flat. Passengers sitting in the back row will also have access to a Bluetooth-enabled 8-inch rearscreen display with a touch panel.The new long-range all wheel drive Model Y has an estimated range of 325 miles, has a top speed of 125 mph and can go from zero to 60 mph in 4.1 seconds. To compare, the old Model Y long-range AWD can reach 311 miles on one charge, has a top speed of 135 mph and can go from zero to 60 mph in 4.8 seconds. Deliveries for the new Model Y begin in March. If you'd still rather get the old version, its prices start at $31,490, though take note that it's getting a $4,000 price hike in Canada.TeslaThis article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/teslas-new-model-y-arrives-in-the-us-055746103.html?src=rss

South of Midnight, Compulsion Games' upcoming Southern Gothic/dark fantasy adventure, got some time in the spotlight during Xbox's Developer Direct event on Thursday. The studio revealed that the game is coming to Xbox Series X/S, Xbox Cloud Gaming and PC on April 8.As ever, Game Pass Ultimate, Console and PC subscribers will get access on day one. Those who snap up the premium edition can jump in five days early.This deep dive into South of Midnight focused on the world, combat and story, which sees a hurricane tear through the part of the Deep South where main character Hazel and her mother live. The two get into an argument that ends in disaster, as their home is swept away with Hazel's mom still inside. As she sets out to find her mother, Hazel finds that the hurricane has brought some fantasy creatures, both friendly and otherwise, to her corner of the world.Our hero learns that she is a weaver, someone who possesses magical abilities. A gold star for anyone who guessed that these can be used for traversal and in combat. Timing is said to be a critical component of battles, so you'd best be sure that your reactions are on point. Speaking of time, Compulsion Games says that South of Midnight should take most players between 10 and 12 hours to finish.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/the-striking-south-of-midnight-comes-to-xbox-and-pc-on-april-8-185157726.html?src=rss

Insomniac is still keeping quiet on the release date for Marvel's Wolverine.