Month: December 2024

The Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian returns for its third season today, March 1, and to celebrate the launch, Xbox has teamed up with Lucasfilm for special-edition Mandalorian Xbox gear.

Xbox and Lucasfilm created Mandalorian-inspired Xbox Series X and S consoles, as well as a custom Grogu Xbox controller and hoodie for it. Microsoft is not selling these items to the public, but fans can retweet the Xbox account and use the hashtag #TheMandalorianXboxSweepstakes for a chance to win. Microsoft started selling Xbox controller hoodies back in November 2022.

The contest runs through May 11 and is open to Xbox fans around the globe. You can take a look at the Mandalorian-themed Xbox gear in the image below, as shared by Xbox on its blog Come from Sports betting site VPbet. The full terms of the sweepstakes can be seen here.

There is no Mandalorian video game, but Xbox owners can jump into Star Wars titles like Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order via Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. The next new Star Wars game is Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, which releases on April 28.

The…

A lucky gambler in Las Vegas has struck gold, winning a jackpot of almost $2 million dollar. The guest was visiting Wynn Resorts’ Encore Las Vegas on the famed Las Vegas Strip and playing a slot by Aristocrat Gaming.

According to an official release from Wynn Resorts, the guest was firing up the reels of Buffalo Power Pay, an American wildlife-themed game. At around 1:45 am on Sunday, the guest hit the slot’s jackpot, securing them a $1,935,806.31 payday.

The winner, who remained unidentified in the official press release, won the jackpot on a $60 wager, Wynn Resorts reported. As of the time of this writing, no additional information is available.

Another Bison-Themed Slots Enthusiasts Won Jackpot Prizes

In any case, the Encore Las Vegas player isn’t the only recent gambler to emerge richer from playing a buffalo-themed title. BetMGM’s Borgata Online brand just handed a huge jackpot to a customer who was enjoying the Entain-developed Bison …

Hospitality and gaming operator Hard Rock International (HRI) announced the appointment of Ragheb “Raj” Dajani as its new Senior Vice President of Development.

Help HRI Cement Position in Luxury Hospitality

The appointment of Dajani as SVP of Development will bring on board HRI an accomplished real estate professional with more than 30 years of real estate development experience gained across planning, design and construction of integrated resorts, including luxury residential, hospitality and casino properties.

Commenting on the new appointment, Joe Emanuele, Chief Design and Development Officer at HRI, was excited to see Dajani join the company’s Real Estate Development team in times during which HRI is continuing “to further cement the Hard Rock brand as a pillar in the global luxury hospitality space.”

On Dajani’s future impact, Emanuele added that “his extensive experience in bringing top-of-the-line luxury integrated resort concepts to life makes [him] an invalu…

In the American state of Massachusetts and a local businessman is reportedly seeking permission to spend upwards of $25 million so as to construct an equine center complete with a mile-long dirt horseracing track and a retail sportsbook.

According to a Tuesday report from the Telegram and Gazette newspaper, the proposition from Armand Janjigian would see a 223-acre site in the town of Sturbridge transformed into the Sturbridge Agricultural and Equestrian Center. The source detailed that the 86-year-old thoroughbred horse breeder wants the coming development located along Massachusetts’ border with Connecticut to also feature a 4,620-feet turf track as well as a conference center and a multitude of restaurants.

Added allure:

Home to just shy of 10,000 people, Sturbridge is situated some 60 miles west of Boston while being a mere 18 miles from the small state’s second largest city, Worcester. Janjigian reportedly explained that his envisioned equine venue will moreover come complete with athletic fields and a community center to host musical performances and festivals alongside walking and educational trails.

Future fortune:

The owner and operator…

I’ve only played an hour or so of Frictional’s horror sequel Amnesia: The Bunker, partly because 2023 is stacked with huge games, but also because I find it incredibly intense. Its ingenious combination of, player-driven objectives, self-induced time pressure and a big, nasty something that stalks you dynamically through its First World War bunker setting, makes for a dreadful experience in the truest sense of the word. It’s so unrelenting that I struggle to muster the courage to leave the game’s central safe room.

Fortunately, Frictional’s planned Hallowe’en update to the game has a solution. Of sorts. As reported by RPS, The Bunker is soon to receive a new difficulty mode called Shellshocked, introducing an array of changes designed to make the experience even more horrible. Foremost among these is how it removes the obstacles that make your safe room safe, which on the plus side means you no longer have to worry about leaving it.

This isn’t the only adjustment Shellshocked difficulty makes either. In the last month or so, the Bunker’s director Fredrik Olsson has demonstrated multiple impending new features on the website formerly known as Twitter. For exa…

The idea that Nvidia is plotting an Arm-based chip for the PC is not news. But the latest coverage from DigiTimes (paywall) claiming that the chip is targeted at the “high end” and goes into production in less than a year makes the whole thing feel both pretty real and very proximate.

According to Digitimes (via Tom’s Hardware), Nvidia’s plans include both chips engineered in partnership with Mediatek and fully custom in-house designs. It’s thought the version for consumer PCs will be pure Nvidia, while Mediatek will partner with Nvidia to create another Arm-based SoC for enterprise customers.

The latter may be necessary in order to provide full 5G cellular networking support, something that isn’t critical for consumer PCs. If true, a new Nvidia chip for PCs would add to an already very exciting looking line up in 2025. Along with the new Nvidia chip, we’re expecting Intel’s next-gen Panther Lake architecture, plus Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2, though that’s somewhat in question what with the ongoing dispute between Qualcomm and Arm.

2025 should also see Apple roll out its M5 SoCs. Those obviously won’t go into PCs running Windows, but will add to the broader com…

All this week we’re looking back on the best of the Dragon Age series, to celebrate its 15th anniversary. We’ve got loads of great Dragon Age opinions and retrospectives, and we’ll be adding more to the list in the days to come.

With Dragon Age: Origins having set a gold standard for RPG intros that stands to this day⁠—seriously, the titular Origins are killer⁠—it’s always been a bummer that the rest of the series has never lived up to that particular legacy. With Inquisition, I’ve always reserved my ire for the disjointed Fade-Sacred Ashes sequence that begins the game on a real squeaker of a fart, but the great separator of failed and successful Inquisition playthroughs comes right after: The Hinterlands.

It’s the Dragon Age Green Hill Zone, baby, a bucolic, forested countryside that abuts what is allegedly the same town of Redcliffe from Dragon Age: Origins (no longer red, there is no cliffe). It’s one of the biggest zones BioWare has ever made, rivalin…