Call of Duty is about to get its biggest update since the release of Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2 last year. Activision spilled the whole beans on next week’s Season 3 update in a voluminous blog post detailing new maps, guns, modes, and features coming to the 6v6 and battle royale corners of CoD.

That’s “maps” plural for traditional multiplayer—a total of three 6v6 maps and two larger “battle maps” adapted from the Warzone map, which is a nice change of pace from what has been a somewhat slow start to Modern Warfare 2’s post-launch support.

Both halves of the community seem pretty well served this time around, which makes me think it could be the first CoD update in a while that makes everyone happy (or at least less angry than usual). Here are the most pertinent details from the Season 3 update coming April 12:

Modern Warfare 2

• 5 new guns, including the famed Intervention sniper rifle from Modern Warfare 2 (2009)
• 3 new …
  

After laying off thousands of employees over the past couple years, games industry executives appear to be adopting a more efficient method of what they euphemistically call “reprioritization”: closing entire studios. Take-Two axed two studios just last week, and now Microsoft has bulldozed four more, including Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks, which it acquired when it bought Bethesda in 2021.

The dissolution of these talented, well-respected teams has reinforced the feeling among gamers and developers that nothing is good enough to earn security under big publishers today. In one popular tweet, indie developer Maisie Ó Dorchaidhe listed 11 things “that will no longer keep you safe in this industry,” including “a good game,” “a profitable game,” and “long hours and sacrifice.”

Indeed, Tango Gameworks’ Hi-Fi Rush was deemed by Microsoft to be a “break out hit” in “all key measurements and expectations” last year. And in his email to staff today (acquired by IGN),…

Samsung has priced up its new 34-inch OLED gaming monitor, yours for a piffling $1,499. That’s far more expensive than Alienware’s alternative 34-inch OLED gaming monitor, which itself is based on Samsung panel tech and starts at just $1,099.

Specs wise, the new Samsung G8 G85SB OLED Ultra looks like a dead ringer for the Alienware AW3423DW. We’re talking 3440 x 1440 pixels on a 34-inch, 21:9 aspect panel. The maximum refresh rate is 175Hz for both, too.

Both brands rate typical full-screen brightness at 250 nits, with Samsung also quoting a minimum full-screen brightness of 200 nits, while Alienware also claims 1,000 nits peak in a small window. 

The new Samsung panel has AMD FreeSync Premium Pro adaptive refresh support, the same as the base $1,099 variant of the Alienware 34. For a little more context, Alienware charges $1,299 for its Nvidia G-Sync Ultimate model.

Samsung is claiming 0.03ms for GTG pixel response, while Alienware pegs their OLED panel…

Watch On

If things go according to schedule, we’ll be playing Oblivion remade in Skyrim next year. The latest trailer for the Skyblivion project shows it looking pretty smooth (apart from one discolored face and a horse walking while going nowhere), highlighting two quests in and around the town of Chorrol. Chorrol itself looks lush and colorful, with some real pretty windmills on the outskirts and an impressive fountain outside the Mages Guild. Everything is so nice to look at that it makes the blandness of the actual quests in this quest showcase stand out.

First up is Fingers of the Mountain, one of way too many quests you have to complete to earn commendations so you can begin the Mages Guild storyline, which is even more boring than the main questline of Oblivion. This is a game where there are famously a heap of sidequests more interesting than the central one, like the Dark Brotherhoood, Thieves Guild, Fighters Guild, and Daedric Shrine questlines, so to demo dud sidequ…

Stig Asmussen, the director of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, is leaving Respawn Entertainment “to pursue other adventures”.

Originally reported by Bloomberg, Asmussen’s departure was later confirmed by EA in a statement, explaining “Stig Asmussen has decided to leave Respawn to pursue other adventures, and we wish him the best of luck.”

Asmussen joined Respawn Entertainment in 2014, where he oversaw development of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order before helming its superior sequel. Prior to that, he spent a decade at Sony America, where he worked on the first three God of War games, serving as Creative Director on God of War 3.

Asmussen’s departure from Respawn is an interesting turn of events. Earlier this year, Asmussen expressed his desire to make the Star Wars Jedi series into a trilogy, an idea that was being discussed before Jedi: Fallen Order launched in 2019. “We were already talking about the second game,” Asmussen said in an interview with IGN. “Frankly, we were …

No judgments, but did you binge all eight episodes of Prime TV’s Fallout show as soon as they dropped? I showed a lot of restraint by watching four episodes one day and four more episodes the next day, but I know certain members of PC Gamer watched the entire season in a single session. 

We’re not alone in jetting through the Fallout show, either: according to Amazon, 65 million people watched the show in the first 16 days of its release, which began when all eight episodes became available on April 10. That’s a lot of pairs of irradiated eyeballs making Fallout the second-most watched show ever on Prime, following The Lords of the Rings: The Rings of Power which aired in 2022.

According to Variety, which has access to a press release I was never sent (I’m not mad, I’m just saying), Fallout is Amazon’s most-watched show ever among people aged 18-34 (I just missed that cutoff because I am 35, as far as you know). It was also especially a hit in Brazil, France, and th…