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Last week, fans of the Metal Gear franchise were disappointed to learn that Metal Gear Survive will have microtransactions and requires an Internet connection. Some fans argued that microtransactions should have no place in a paid-for game such as this. Konami hasn’t announced any drastic changes such as temporarily removing microtransactions, Star Wars Battlefront 2-style, but one key developer has now shed a bit more light on the game’s business model....

Metro Exodus is officially coming to the PS5 and Xbox Series X. The first in the series to be fully ported to next-gen consoles, Metro Exodus will also come with a slew of new enhancements. Originally launching in February 2019, Metro Exodus marks developer 4A Games’ third entry in the novel-adapted franchise, as the Metro games are based on a series of books written by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. Detailed in a post on its website, 4A Games’ development team talks about what to expect from its next-gen versions....

With the introduction of the Xbox brand, Microsoft has largely moved away from supporting games on PC. They used to be at the forefront of the PC gaming market, but their focus on Xbox left PC gaming behind. Now, services such as Steam dominate PC gaming, while Microsoft has taken a backseat role in terms of PC gaming. That should change with Windows 10. Ever since the Windows 10 reveal, Microsoft has greatly focused on the gaming aspects of the new OS (and the return of the beloved start button)....

Update (3/18/20): Talk about jumping the gun! The initial Thanksgiving release date has been rolled back by none other than Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb, who tweeted out the following. An Xbox product page in some regions inaccurately listed the launch date for Xbox Series X as Thanksgiving 2020. We are committed to launching Holiday 2020. So there it is - “Holiday 2020.” Whether that Thanksgiving date was accurate or not, well, we’ll just have to wait and see....

Game Rant recently had the chance to speak to James Gwertzman, the head of cloud gaming services at Microsoft. Gwertzman was one of the early pioneers in making cloud technologies specifically for video games, and since his company, PlayFab, was acquired by Microsoft three years ago, he has worked to improve the ever-expanding online components of countless titles big and small. In our interview with Gwertzman, he covered many topics from the future of machine learning to views on console exclusives, but an early discussion of Flight Simulator revealed one of his most interesting predictions for the games industry....

No one can deny that the classic look of Minecraft is great, but there’s no harm in changing things and spicing the game up every once in a while with resource packs and mods. It’s the modding community that has really helped to diversify the game and even pitch some ideas to the original developers to improve the vanilla version further. One of the best and easiest changes to make is to download a resource pack or a texture pack, which can change the sounds and appearance of various blocks....

Once players have learned how to survive in Minecraft, the next step is to learn how to thrive. There are countless of little things that players can do to improve their quality of life, provided they’re up for a bit of a grind to get all the building materials or necessary items to make such things. One of the great milestones for any player is to build a Conduit. The Conduit is a special item similar to a beacon, but can only be made if the player has a Heart of the Sea....

Redstone is one of the most useful materials in Minecraft, with a virtually endless list of things that can be accomplished using the powerful crimson powder. With the capability to make anything from Redstone vending machines to mob farms, players are seemingly only limited by their imagination when building with Redstone. Fortunately, given its usefulness, Redstone isn’t difficult to harvest in Minecraft. This is where players can find Redstone, and here are tips for mining it....

At the time of this writing, 19,802,2345 people have registered online for a Minecraft account (not sure how accurate that first number is as it appears to be a simple timed counter) and 4,617,339 have purchased the game. Needless to say, it proved itself a long time ago to be a monstrous success and it reigned supreme as one of the most buzzed about games of 2011. Since it’s release in November however, the tides have calmed on the Minecraft front, partly due to the lack of updates now that it’s released in full, and party due to all of the other games that came out in the fall....

The return of MLB The Show is a joyous occasion for any baseball fan. And for the first time, not just PlayStation baseball fans. The popular baseball sim from San Diego Studio is launching on the Xbox Series and will be available on Game Pass. MLB The Show 21 caters to any baseball fanatic, whether it’s testing your front office skills in building a World Series contender in Franchise mode or creating your own player and embarking on your MLB journey, there’s plenty to satisfy all....

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare puts a lot of attention to its details. From the weapons to environments, the game takes special care to make sure that everything models are as detailed as possible, even for content that isn’t realistic. Still, in a quest for Modern Warfare realism, small details can often fall through the cracks. In this case, a fan noticed a slight problem between a character’s bio and their in-game model....

Remember LEGO Universe? When that game was announced the Game Rant team was excited at the potential. We were ultimately let down as LEGO Universe failed to offer the sort of creation we desire from LEGO, while at the same time struggled to define itself as an action-adventure MMO. After adding a free-to-play version of the game late last summer, the LEGO Universe servers were shut down in January. In its wake comes a new LEGO MMO from Funcom, the creators of Age of Conan....

MARTY! LEGO has just unveiled a beautiful model of the iconic DeLorean time machine from Back to the Future (all three versions, too)! “Inspiring fans to fire up their brick building engines, the LEGO Group and Universal Brand Development have revealed a brand new three-in-one reproduction of one of the most iconic vehicles of all time – the Back to the Future DeLorean Time Machine. Inspired by the DeLorean car seen in the time-traveling adventure film franchise from Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment, the LEGO Back to the Future Time Machine set allows builders to create the car from either the first, second, or third film....

From The Sopranos to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, check out the stories behind the iconic theme songs for these eleven shows. “Whether it’s a wordy epic that chronicles the show’s backstory or an orchestral piece that lends itself to lyrical parody, a good theme song can augment a TV show’s popularity and even sometimes outlive it. But there’s no clear path to creating—or even just choosing—the perfect track.” Read more at Mental Floss....

This piece contains spoilers for Netflix’s Lupin. Netflix’s compelling French crime comedy-drama Lupin ended Part 1 on a hell of a cliffhanger. Yes, there’s Assane Diop’s (Omar Sy) son Raoul (Etan Simon) getting snatched by Pellegrini’s cleaner Leonard (Adama Niane) in the Maurice Leblanc-obsessed town of Étretat, though honestly that had been telegraphed throughout “Chapter 5.” The real stunner is when Officer Guedira (Soufiane Guerrab), perhaps the only person whose Lupin fandom rivals Assane’s, tracks down the gentleman thief and addresses him as, “Arsène Lupin?...

Filmmaker Alex Garland has been open about the fact that Men, his first outright horror movie as a director, began with a fascination for the Green Man, an ancient and mysterious figure who’s been carved into stone edifices across Europe and the Middle East for millennia. This is apt, because despite some credible and educated guesses, no one is entirely sure what exactly the Green Man represents, or how he was worshiped (if at all)....

After struggling to solve one of Metroid Dread‘s earliest puzzles, God of War and Twisted Metal director David Jaffe proceeded to go on an epic multi-front rant in which he referred to Metroid Dread as a “sacred cow” with “s*** design” and criticized modern developers for trying to make games too hard. During a recent Metroid Dread stream, Jaffe encountered an early in-game roadblock he couldn’t quite figure out. Shortly thereafter, someone in the chat seems to have told him that he needs to shoot the ceiling in order to access the area above....

Remember that 56-page PowerPoint document that leaked last week, containing details about the Xbox 720 launch plans? After it went up, law firm Covington & Burling LLP, a firm that represents Microsoft, had it taken down, lending some credence to the potential of the document’s authenticity. As we’ve learned today, other sites hosting the Xbox 720 document have been sent takedown notices, including one Czech site who received a notice from a Microsoft internet investigator, seemingly confirming that the document is real and that Microsoft doesn’t want you to see it....