Today, Warner Bros. Interactive and Valve announced a collaboration in conjunction with the upcoming launch of Scribblenauts Unlimited. Gamers that pre-order Scribblenauts Unlimited through Steam will receive a free digital Rooster Hat immediately following the purchase of $29.99.

The Rooster Hat, worn by Maxwell himself, comes in both red and pink -- the pink hat is worn by Maxwell's sister Lily.

Scribblenauts Unlimited launches on November 20th for PC, 3DS, and the Wii U. Stay tuned to IGN for a complete review in the coming weeks.

Ryan Clements writes for IGN.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Earlier today, Syfy announced that they've picked up Haven, starring Emily Rose, Lucas Bryant and occasionally former WWE Superstar Edge, for a 13-episode fourth season.

Following WWE Smackdown on Friday nights, Haven is the number one cable program in the 18-49 and 25-54 demos, in the 10pm slot.

“We couldn’t be happier to see the story of Audrey Parker and the creepy, quirky town of Haven continue next year," said Mark Stern, President, Original Content, Syfy, and Co-Head, Original Content, Universal Cable Productions. "Season 3 has hit a creative and critical high and we’re very excited to see where the talented production team takes our colorful cast of characters led by the perfect trifecta of Emily Rose, Eric Balfour and Lucas Bryant in Season 4.”

Still no word on a Season 3 pickup for Syfy's Alphas, which wrapped up its second season back in October. As fans of that show, we here at IGN TV remain hopeful.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Today, new downloadable content was announced for the video game adaptation of Game of Thrones. The DLC, titled Beyond the Wall, adds an additional two hours of play according to the issued press release.

Beyond the Wall explores the past of Mors Westfold and his early experiences with the Night's Watch. Players will travel, as you might expect, beyond the Wall and into Wildling territory, uncovering the origin story of Mors.

Game of Thrones: Beyond the Wall is currently available for PC and Xbox 360. The PlayStation 3 version will be launched on the PlayStation Network "in the weeks to come."

Ryan Clements writes for IGN. He's almost finished with the first book in the Song of Ice and Fire series. Follow him on Twitter at @PwamCider.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Today brings word that Star Wars: Episode VII may have found its screenwriter.

Vulture claims that Oscar winner Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3, Little Miss Sunshine) "has written a 40- to 50-page treatment for the film and is likely to be at least one of the writers when the Disney/Lucasfilm project begins shooting in 2014." They say Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo are indeed in it.

Furthermore, Vulture hears "Arndt's 40-something page treatment will soon be crossing the desks of top directors, including Brad Bird, Steven Spielberg (Lucasfilm’s co-chair, Kathleen Kennedy's former producing partner), and J.J. Abrams. Whether they’d be interested is unknown (Star Wars is a lot of baggage for an established director), but Disney wants to make sure they’ve at least tried the biggest names."

Arndt also co-wrote the screenplay adaptation of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which is currently in production.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

It’s been long rumored that Polygon Man is the final boss in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. Today, we can confirm that this is, indeed, the case. In PlayStation All-Stars’ introduction video, seen below (and viewable whenever you turn on the game), you’ll see each of the game’s 10 rivalries culminate with a quick glimpse of Polygon Man himself.

Who is Polygon Man, you ask? In short, he’s the original PlayStation mascot, designed to tease the power of the PlayStation before it launched in the west in 1995. Interestingly, the ad campaign was pulled before the console launched in North America. According to Edge, this reportedly occurred when Sony Computer Entertainment founder and former CEO Ken Kutaragi “went absolutely insane” upon seeing it on Sony’s E3 booth in 1995. In other words, he wasn’t pleased.

But that hasn’t stopped Polygon Man from persisting in the minds of the most hardcore PlayStation faithful, and his inclusion in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale indicates that the team at SuperBot Entertainment has its roots firmly planted in the same soil PlayStation sprouted from nearly two decades ago. But the intro video itself also serves a purpose apart from simply showing off Polygon Man, as SuperBot Entertainment’s Omar Kendall explains.

“We really wanted to play up the concept of rivalries” in All-Stars, Kendall said, the hypothetical “what ifs” of the universe they’ve created where the unlikeliest of characters can face-off against one another. The intro video allows SuperBot Entertainment to do that. With the video’s script and design concocted in-house, SuperBot utilized the skills of Zoic Studios to render and create the intro itself.

But for Kendall, a veteran of the fighting development scene, an intro such as this serves another purpose. “This was another note that we could hit that was very much in line with the overall message that PlayStation All-Stars really is, or at least has roots in traditional fighting games.” He mentions games like Soul Calibur and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 as examples of great fighting games with epic intros like the one they’ve attempted to put in their game.

With all 10 of the rivalries shown-off in full, Kendall noted that there were some “fantasy matchups” in there, like Ratchet & Clank versus Jak & Daxter, as well as some “in your face” rivalries, and some more subtle “easter egg” rivalries, like the one between Nathan Drake and Sly Cooper that play off of the fact that both are treasure hunters… or perhaps thieves. He describes the entire scenario as being “big notes” complemented by “subtle cues.”

The rivalries are as follows:

• Ratchet & Clank versus Jak & Daxter
• Sly Cooper versus Nathan Drake
• Fat Princess versus Evil Cole MacGrath
• Sir Daniel Fortesque versus Colonel Radec
• Sackboy versus Big Daddy
• Nariko versus Dante
• Heihachi versus Toro
• Spike versus Parappa the Rapper
• Good Cole MacGrath versus Raiden
• Sweet Tooth versus Kratos

Kendall stressed that the story in All-Stars should be loose and act as an excuse for these characters to come together. But it shouldn’t be construed as canon. He “didn’t want a big, sort of heavy story that was going to feel really arbitrary and cheesy and kind of pull the players out. Because these characters… come from these really rich worlds already, and I knew that this game wasn’t going to serve to paint the sort of official storylines of these individual characters. I knew it was going to be something that they experience together mutually, in some ways exclusively, and then go back to their worlds. You’re really not going to see their experiences in PlayStation All-Stars reflected in God of War IV or God of War V.”

Yet, citing the famous Michael ad (seen below), Kendall admits that “all of these characters live inside this shared space,” later noting that “we thought it would be really cool if we, as opposed to trying really hard to create this fiction and explain why Kratos and Sackboy are in the same world together, just sort of casually acknowledge the fact that this world is living inside of your PlayStation.”

It’s that very notion – the world living inside of your PlayStation – that influenced the team to put Polygon Man in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale as the final boss.

“When we were thinking about a boss for PlayStation All-Stars, we asked ourselves ‘what was the ultimate manifestation of PlayStation?’ And for us, it was Polygon Man. If you could look at some of the original material that Polygon Man appeared in, he makes these crazy statements, these sort of almost nonsensical statements, like ‘power is an illusion’, ‘absolute power is a seamless illusion’. These really weird, grandiose statements. He doesn’t really come off as a bad guy, but he comes off as kind of this representative of power, the power and potential and what PlayStation represents. So we thought it would be really cool if at the center of this shared universe all of these PlayStation characters inhabit was Polygon Man, waiting as the ultimate challenge for this world.”

Kendall went on. “If you look at the rivalry cutscene, it takes place in this kind of blue polygonal space. That, for us, is kind of the PlayStation universe at its base. You’ll see the XMB power waves flying in the background, you’ll see the PlayStation shapes flying around in the background. That’s kind of like the PlayStation landscape stripped bare to its essence… You see that space transition into the purple Polygon Man colors, and for us, Polygon Man is made of the same stuff, I guess, as the essence of the PlayStation universe.”

Believe it or not, however, Polygon Man wasn’t the original idea for the final boss in PlayStation All-Stars. The team at SuperBot came up with many ideas, including ones that took from certain games. An idea floated early on was the Helghan Army from Killzone being the game’s villain. But those sorts of ideas didn’t jive with the idea of what PlayStation All-Stars was all about.

“I think what we realized when we were going through our exploration was that yeah, certainly we could identify a single evil entity from one of our characters’ universes,” Kendall explained. “It could be Zeus (from God of War), it could be Dr. Nefarious (from Ratchet & Clank), it could be any of our sort of standard villains. But we felt that as a game called PlayStation All-Stars, we really wanted the final challenge to not draw from a single, particular IP, but really, we wanted the final challenge to be against the entire PlayStation brand itself. And when we began to think about it that way, Polygon Man really became the obvious choice.”

Colin Moriarty is an IGN PlayStation editor. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN and learn just how sad the life of a New York Islanders and New York Jets fan can be.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

USA announced today that Burn Notice has been given a 13-episode order for a seventh season. This will mark the third show in the cable network's history to reach 100 episodes.

"Burn Notice is like a fine wine that gets better with age," said USA Network Co-Presidents Chris McCumber and Jeff Wachtel. "Delivering high-octane action, gripping drama and nearly 7 million viewers for the mid-season finale, this veteran series is a proven staple of our portfolio."

This announcement completes the network's renewals of series for the summer. Paired with USA's Suits -- which was recently given its own third-season order -- Burn Notice had the most successful block on television during its sixth season run.

The news wasn't so good recently for USA's Fairly Legal, Common Law and Political Animals, all of which have been cancelled.

Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love by following @Max_Nicholson on Twitter, or MaxNicholson on IGN.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Today, Bethesda Game Studios – the developer behind Fallout 3 and the Elder Scrolls franchise – Tweeted some interesting news. Notably that the studio is “close on new Skyrim content for PS3 and PC.” It is, of course, the proclamation of being close to a solution to its notorious PS3 DLC issues that’s of real interest here.

Skyrim’s problems on PS3 are, a year out from its initial launch, notorious. And while those problems haven’t plagued everyone who played Skyrim on PlayStation 3, the issues were serious enough that it’s stopped any of the game’s much-anticipated DLC from coming to Sony’s console.

So far, two DLC packs have been released for other platforms. However, both Dawnguard and Hearthfire have yet to come to PlayStation 3, with no word on if or when they would. The third piece of DLC, Dragonborn, was recently revealed.

Unfortunately, the vague nature of the Tweet from Bethesda Game Studios doesn’t indicate much, except that we should likely expect more news sometime in the near future. In the meantime, let’s keep our fingers crossed that PS3 gamers will finally get in on the DLC their Xbox 360 and PC-playing brethren have already experienced.

Colin Moriarty is an IGN PlayStation editor. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN and learn just how sad the life of a New York Islanders and New York Jets fan can be.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Arguably the biggest news coming out of today's Nintendo Direct livestream was that Nintendo is developing its own karaoke software, snappily titled: Nintendo-JoySound Wii Karaoke U. You'll apparently be able to use the in-built mic or purchase a special Wii U karaoke microphone, which will come with a trial disc.

Over 90,000 songs will be available. But don't get too excited, it's unlikely the service will be made available outside of Japan.

Would you like to see Wii U Karaoke come to the West? Let us know in the comments below.

Daniel is IGN's UK Staff Writer, and you can be part of the world's worst cult by following him on IGN and Twitter.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

The reasons for today’s invigorating renaissance in PC gaming, for the triumphant return of so many of its best development heroes, are threefold...

First, the guys who made those classic games, mostly in the 1990s, are now frustrated creators with a pent-up desire to deliver amazing new experiences.

Second, through crowd-funding, they are suddenly able to sail around the frigid limitations of the publisher-model and deliver those games to the public.

Third, because the people who enjoyed those games are still gamers. We want to re-experience those old game-styles in a 21st Century mode. Our passion raises funds and interest and inspires younger gamers. When it works, it’s a virtuous circle.

Chris Roberts and his famed project Star Citizen is one of those projects. It’s a dazzling, high-end PC game offering space combat and exploration on a monumental scale. This is not the kind of game that would likely get a green-light from a major publisher, but through KickStarter and other crowd-funding outlets, it’s attracted millions of dollars, enough to guarantee enough moolah to magic the game into life. Star Citizen might be two years from launch, but it remains, undoubtedly, one of the most warmly anticipated PC games currently in development.

If you were a serious PC gamer in the 1990s, you probably played one of Roberts’ games, most likely a Wing Commander 3D space shooter or one of his more ‘explore-and-trade’ games like Freelancer or Privateer. These games were central to PC gaming. They were gorgeous and they were great fun. They always made the covers of PC Gamer and its ilk. They were the big-sellers of their day.

Time moves along, most especially in gaming. Today, they look primitive and slow. They also took an unfortunate turn into the world of Full-Motion Video, with grand stories starring Mark Hamill, which seemed like a big deal at the time, but turned out to be a dead-end for gaming.

As the '90s drew to a close, Roberts had fallen in love with filmmaking and went off to be a director and producer for a while. Now he’s hungry again to create huge game-worlds, space-epics pitching alien races against one another, bulking starships spewing streams of buzzing battle-fighters.

The games make the promise to put you in the dog-fightin’ action-sequences reminiscent of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica with the option to toddle off and live a quieter life at the edges of space, trading, exploring, perhaps dabbling in a spot of casual piracy.

Roberts is not afraid to embrace his past and to admit that Star Citizen is an amalgamation of his best previous work, with the added bonus of modern computing power and honed game-design techniques. (There will be no FMV sequences.)

He tells IGN, “If I was going to make another Wing Commander, a lot of what I'm doing now would be in that game. I feel like the tools and technologies have moved on so much that you could go back and do a reboot, the same way they did with Batman or with Star Trek, where you tell the same story again but it’s a different experience. The way that you can present it is on a whole new level.

“For me, there were a lot of things, when I was making Wing Commander or Freelancer or Privateer, that I would have wanted to be able to do, but I was limited by the time and the technology. Now I don't have the same issues. I'm getting to go back and revisit those old ideas and concepts, but greatly expand them in a way that I couldn't in the past.”

He adds, “In the past, you'd build these cool pre-rendered cinematic sequences and you'd do it in high-end software on SGIs. You were always thinking, ‘If only I could do this in real time, it would be amazing.’ That's where we're at right now. You can do a lot of that in real time. It's amazing, and it's fun.”

Star Citizen’s story is typical space-opera. Its single-player campaign, called Squadron 42, puts you in the front-line of a galactic dispute and you’ll do yawing, spinning, turning combat in order to gain enough cash and experience to beef up your ship and / or go gallivanting around the galaxy, raising hell or gathering space-shekels. (The thing to read is Anthony Gallegos’s preview.)

So 3D space-combat is the game’s central mechanic and, of course, this is where it gets interesting. Because videogame and movie space-combat is not quite the same as probable, actual real space combat, and this causes a disturbance in the minds of those who desire not merely physical realism, but absolute realism.

Roberts has clearly given this some thought. When I raise the issue, he is unapologetic. “The model of space combat isn't what it really would be, because it would be at ridiculously high speeds. You'd never see your opponent. It would all be done with computers. You'd basically be flying big spheres around. You’d wait for a blip to appear on the radar screen, lock your missile, hit a button, and watch it blow up.

"But that's not fun. The model is really World War II dogfighting in space. Even though we're doing a bunch of things on the physics side that are actually accurate, we do do things like limiting speeds because it's really the only way where you can have much fun dogfighting. So we take a certain amount of license to bring it down into the fantasy realm of space combat.”

Despite his wanderings in Hollywood - as well as directing the failed Wing Commander movie, he produced a number of films, including Lord of War - Roberts has remained a gamer. There are elements of game design’s evolution that he believes mark a wrong direction, specifically, a lack of consequence for failure.

Clearly, players who invest days into building a snazzy spacecraft, all 25th Century conveniences with a bursting cash-box under the cockpit, are not going to be happy if their life’s work is nabbed by some lurking scumbag space-pirate. And so, anyone venturing into the cosmic badlands can purchase certain insurance packages. Even then, getting blasted in Star Citizen is not going to be a good experience.

“I do miss a certain amount of difficulty in playing games,” he says. “I feel like my sense of achievement in beating a level or beating a boss is almost nothing now, because I know that no matter what I do, I'm going to respawn two seconds before I died. Games like Mass Effect or even Uncharted, I play them all, but I bully my way through the story. I don't really pay that much attention to whether or not I'm running into a room and getting killed in a hail of bullets, because I know I can just do it again.

“I thought Demon's Souls had a really nice, balanced setup. It was hard, it was challenging, but at the same time, it was fair. If you learned what to do and what the techniques and pitfalls were, it was always your own fault if you died. It wasn't an arbitrary thing. There was an immense sense of satisfaction.

“I'd say that Demon's Souls is more difficult than I would want to make one of my games, but it's reminded me of the idea that you should have some level of challenge in your game. It gives you much more of a sense of satisfaction and personal achievement than something that lets you quickly restart like the current generation of console action-adventure games.”

Even if you’re not a massive fan of space-combat, there’s little doubt that Star Citizen is representative of hardcore PC gaming’s rebirth, of the confirmation of PC as a core gaming platform for the future. in his Kickstarter pitch, Roberts makes this point again and again.

“The PC represents constant change and innovation. It doesn't stagnate. It's always challenging you. As someone that likes cool new stuff, I'm much more into it than a platform that's going to be the same for six or seven or 10 years.

“I like the fact that there's a more powerful video card every year, and maybe there's something new I can do that I couldn't have done last year. It's one of the reasons I think I was successful when I was doing the old Wing Commander stuff.  It got to the point where I could see that, alright, it can really do what I want to do now. And, yes, it inspires people to buy new hardware and really geek out. It's all about building the most immersive, cool experience.”

For daily opinions, debates and interviews on games you can follow Colin Campbell on Twitter or at IGN. 

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Lionsgate is sticking with Catching Fire director Francis Lawrence, announcing today that they've signed him to direct the series finale The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2.

Lawrence (I Am Legend, Constantine) is currently in production on The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the second film in the Hunger Games saga.

Mockingjay Parts 1 & 2 make up the third and fourth installments of heroine Katniss Everdeen’s journey as she leads the districts of Panem in a rebellion against the tyrannical and corrupt Capitol. As the war that will determine the fate of Panem escalates, Katniss must decipher for herself who she can trust and what needs to be done, with everything she cares for in the balance.

Mockingjay Part 1 opens November 21, 2014 and Part 2 opens November 20, 2015.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Today was an exciting day here at the IGN office, as we finally got our copy of Harvest Moon: A New Beginning. You can expect to see our full review show up on the 3DS page sometime in the next week or so, but in the meantime, enjoy the "unboxing" of sorts that took place upon the game's arrival.

Spoiler: It came with a giant cow. Whoa!

Can the poor little guy even BREATHE in there?! I better let him out quickly...

Free at last! Now for some moo-schief. I mean... mischief.

Of course, my little buddy here didn't come empty-handed.

A giant Mushroom for a giant cow plushie.

Smooshy (that's the cow's name now) was pleased to find he wasn't the only giant animal around town. I didn't have the heart to tell him that Stretch is actually rather small for a giraffe.

What the?! BAD Lion-O! Get off Smooshy this instant!

In one of the day's highlights, our big cow friend was welcomed as the moo-est member of the Justice League. Erm, newest (that was the last pun, promise).

Then again, giving a ride to an adorable anime girl wasn't so bad either...

Don't move... help is on the way!

After a hectic day at the IGN office, Smooshy treated himself to some arcade action.

What an exhausting day! You can get your hands on this cuddly ball of cow by pre-ordering Harvest Moon: A New Beginning from the Natsume store. The game's official release date is set for November 6, so hurry if you want to get in on the giant cow action.

Stay to to IGN for all things Harvest Moon.

Audrey Drake is an Associate Editor at IGN and a proud member of the IGN Nintendo team. She is also a lifelong gamer, a frequent banisher of evil and a wielder of various legendary blades. You can keep track of her wild adventures by following Aminka on IGN or @GameOnAminka on Twitter. Game on!

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Valve has launched Scream Fortress, its 4th annual Halloween event, adding Zombies, new achievements and much more to Team Fortress 2 for a limited time. Running today through November 8th, the update adds multiple new features including:

• Merasmus: a “bomb-spewing, fate-spinning spectral magician” on King of the Hill maps 
• Wheel of Fate: Every time a control point changes hands, “the Wheel of Fate spins, and one of many potentially horrible fates await you! Or maybe something good! Who knows?” 
• Magic Spells: Spells that add new effects on items in your backpack, including shifting paint colors, ghost summoning, flaming footsteps and more 
• Wave 666: Replaces robots with a single wave of more than 800 Zombies in Mann vs. Machine mode 
• Two new achievements: Wizards Never Prosper (Kill Merasmus) and A Lovely Vacation Spot (Get to Skull Island and claim your reward!)

Valve also released a Halloween-themed Team Fortress 2 comic called Doom-Mates, which you can read on Team Fortress 2’s official site.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following @garfep on Twitter or garfep on IGN.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

As Skyfall opens in the U.K. today, James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson have quietly hired Skyfall writer John Logan to pen not one but two 007 films.

According to Deadline, the writer pitched an original two-movie arc while Skyfall was in production, and he has already begun writing the scripts.

A successful playwright, Logan has also worked on such films as Gladiator, Hugo, The Aviator, The Last Samurai and Star Trek: Nemesis. He also wrote the screenplay for Darren Aronofsky's forthcoming biblical epic Noah, starring Russel Crowe.

Skyfall hits stateside theaters stateside on November 9.

Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love by following @Max_Nicholson on Twitter, or MaxNicholson on IGN.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Amazon announced a Q3 $274 million net loss in an earnings report today. The poor quarter is no surprise to anyone who followed the LivingSocial meltdown - which contributed to $169 million of that $274 million.

But perhaps the big news is how Amazon used the opportunity to slam the iPad Mini as an inferior device. Starting the section "Highlights" is a lengthy bulletlist, which compared both models of Amazon's Kindle Fire HDs to the iPad Mini.

While there's no hard and fast rule on how a company must report their earnings, starting their quarter highlights by taking a competitor's product to task seems like a weird choice. Why not celebrate the Kindle Fire HD's general release and reception? Also odd: where's the Kindle Fire HD's other competition on that list? Or are they genuinely not worried about the Nexus 7 as a competitor?

What do you think? Should Amazon stick to their own numbers, or is this a classic case of turning lemons into lemonade?

Nic is the Editor of IGN Tech. He loves technology almost as much as the SF Giants, Dogfish Head iPA, and Freelance Whales. You can follow him on Twitter @nicvargus and IGN.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

In Apple's quarterly earnings conference call, which began today at 2:00 p.m. PT, the company revealed new record profits for the September fiscal quarter (Q4).

Apple's quarterly revenue was $36.0 billion (up $7.7 billion year over year), with a quarterly net profit of $8.2 billion. Apple's Peter Oppenheimer attributed these record numbers mostly to strong iPhone and iPad device sales.

The company sold 26.9 million iPhones during Q4 (up 58% YOY) and 14 million iPads (up 26% YOY). Mac sales grew just 1% at 4.9 million units (but Apple's Peter Oppenheimer was eager to compare that against the 8% decline of the greater PC market).

Sales of iPods dropped 19% year over year, but Apple TV sales doubled. The iTunes store and iOS App store both set all-time quarterly records.

“

The iPad mini's margin is "significantly below" Apple's average

Apple's retail store revenues grew 18%, thanks largely to a huge iPhone launch and to opening 18 new stores. Apple estimates that 94 million people visited an Apple store during the fiscal quarter, for an average of 19,000 per store per week.

For each issued share of Apple stock, the company turned a profit of $8.67. As Apple now has $121.3 billion in the bank (and they're still waiting on a big check from Samsung), its board has decided to pay out a dividend of $2.65/share on Nov 15th.

Apple's 2012 fiscal year is over now (Apple counts holiday sales as the first quarter of 2013), but the company ended its earnings call with predictions for the coming months. Apple expects to bring in $52 billion in holiday sales, with a gross margin of about 36%. That's actually a worse margin than Apple is used to (down from 40% this quarter), due to slimmer margins on the iPhone 5 and iPad mini.

Apple expects 80% of revenue in Q1 to come from products announced in the last 2 months. All of Apple's new products have higher costs than their predecessors and therefore lower gross margins. The iPad mini's margin is "significantly below" Apple's average.

Is your head spinning from the numbers? Fell free to hit us with any questions in the comments.

Jon Fox is a Seattle hipster who loves polar bears and climbing trees. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

LG's forthcoming Optimus G-based Nexus phone hasn't been leaked quite as thoroughly as the iPhone 5 was, but it's been no great secret either. Earlier today, the phone showed up for preorder at UK phone retailer Carphone Warehouse, and its legit-looking splash page (which has since been taken down) was consistent with the previously leaked specs.

The Nexus 4 was listed as having a quad-core Snapdragon CPU running Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, 2G of RAM, NFC, an 8-megapixel camera and a 4.7-inch 1280 x 768 display. The detailed specs list it as being 9.1mm thick.

One piece of bad news could mar the phone though: at least at at Carphone Warehouse, it looks like the Nexus 4 will only be available with a disappointing 8GB of onboard storage, without a microSD slot for expanding.

Google is expected to announce the Nexus 4, along with other products, at its Android event next Monday, October 29th. If Carphone Warehouse's information holds true, the phone will be available the very next day (Oct 30th).

Will you order a Nexus 4 if you can get it next week? Let us know in the comments.

Jon Fox is a Seattle hipster who loves polar bears and climbing trees. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Downloadable content is headed to the PC version of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Ubisoft has announced that all content packs will be available on PC beginning today with the release of the Arctic Strike Map Pack.

PC players will also have the option to purchase a Season pass for $24.99 that will give them a $10 discount off the total price of upcoming downloadable content. The Season Pass is available now on Ubisoft's site and “includes all-new playable maps and game modes, extra weapons for Ghosts and Bodark units, additional Uplay achievements and more.”

Arctic Strike was previously released on consoles in July and adds new multiplayer maps, a new multiplayer mode, a new Guerrilla mode co-op map and six additional weapons. The console versions of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier previously received additional content in the Raven Strike Pack in September and the Khyber Strike Pack earlier this month. Release windows for PC versions of those packs haven’t been revealed, but we’ve reached out to Ubisoft and will update this story with any additional info we receive.

For more on Future Soldier, read our Ghost Recon: Future Soldier review and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier wiki guide.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following @garfep on Twitter or garfep on IGN.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Apple revealed a slew of landmark sales and usage figure at today's iPad Mini event.

iPad Sales:

In only two and a half years, Apple has sold over 100 million iPads. In Quarter 2 of 2012, Apple's iPad sales figures outstripped all other other PC manufacturers.

iPad Usage:

And while its tablet market share is declining somewhat, 91 percent of the Web traffic generated by tablets in the last year came from iPads. Tim Cook announced that 94 percent of Fortune 500 companies use iPads "in an official capacity."

iPhone / iPod Sales:

In its first weekend this September, the iPhone 5 sold five million units. Apple has shipped three million of its new iPods since they were announced at the same time.

Developer revenues from Apple's app store recently passed $6.5 billion, with more than 35 billion downloads of 700,000 available apps.

iPhone / iPod Usage:

A jaw-dropping 200 million iOS devices are now running iOS 6, just one month after it was released to the public. Tim Cook called this "the fastest software upgrade in history."

iMessage has been used to send 300 billion messages - transmitting an average of 28,000 every second.

There are apparently 160 million people using Game Center on iOS or OS X Mountain Lion, and iCloud has been used to store 125 million Documents and 70 million photo in the past year.

iBooks Stats:

It may have been the subject of an antitrust suit in the US, but Apple's iBookstore has seen 1.5 million books uploaded since 2010, with more than 400 million downloads. There are reportedly 2,500 U.S. classrooms using iBooks textbooks.

Apple also announced an update to its iBooks app, bringing support for over 40 languages, hands-free scrolling, better iCloud integration (for keeping your place in sync across multiple devices) and a handful of other features.

Jon Fox is a Seattle hipster who loves polar bears and climbing trees. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Today at Apple's iPad Mini event the company announced a variety of new hardware, including a refreshed mainline iPad. Still known as just "iPad" (Apple dropped specific iPad naming with the 3rd generation iPad released in March), the new device features Apple's new A6X chip. This new hardware replaces the A5X chip found in the third generation iPad with Apple promising performance that is "twice as fast."

The new iPad also features dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) 802.11n Wi-Fi which should increase Wi-Fi speeds in real-world settings. iPad owners that spring for cellular access will now be able to connect to LTE networks. It also drops Apple's old 30-pin connector in favor of the company's smaller new Lightning connector.

Beyond these internal upgrades, the iPad remains the same. It's features the same Retina Display screen resolution as well as the same size and weight. The refresh generally seems designed to keep pace with the ever-growing graphics requirements of high-end games and apps and to keep the iPad up-to-date with Apple's previous iPhone 5 improvements.

The new 4th generation iPad starts at $499.

Justin is Editor of IGN Wireless. You can follow him on Twitter at @ErrorJustin and on IGN.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Apple showed off their brand new 7.9" tablet, the iPad Mini, today at a media event in San Jose.

The long-rumored tablet featured an iPod Touch-esque body with full aluminum back in both slate and raw aluminum - the same as found on iPhone 5s.

The iPad Mini also features a Lightning dock connector, which allows the device to be as thin as it is - only 7.2 millimeters thick. Or as Apple said, "It's as thin as a pencil." The iPad Mini boasts both front and rear-cameras.

“

It's as thin as a pencil.

The iPad Mini has the same A5 processor and screen resolution as the iPad 2, which means it can use all the same tablet apps as the full-sized iPad.

It doesn't, however, have a Retina Display. While some of these specs are worse than those found in the competition (like the Kindle Fire HD), Apple has by far the most robust App Store. Whether that will make the iPad Mini a success is yet to be seen.

Preorders start on October 26th and Apple will begin shipping the iPad Mini on November 2nd. The iPad mini starts at $329 for a 16GB option and can be configured up to 64GBs with LTE. If rumors are correct, there will be an abundance in circulation - word on the street is Apple produced 10 million.

So what do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Nic is the Editor of IGN Tech. He loves technology almost as much as the SF Giants, Velveeta Sheels, and P.O.S.'s new album. You can follow him on Twitter @nicvargus and IGN.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com