A tweet from Creative Assembly reveals the developer of the Total War series and Alien Isolation is now working on a first-person shooter (thanks PC Gamer). This mentions a visit from director Neill Blomkamp, prompting us to wonder if the new IP they mention related to his upcoming project, Robocop Returns. Here's the tweet:

So, this happened. @NeillBlomkamp dropped by CA HQ for a behind-the-scenes look at the development of our brand-new FPS IP!

A post on the BioWare Blog looks "Onward to Launch" of Anthem, following the public demo of the upcoming action/RPG. BioWare's Chad Robertson is still sticking to the spin that the previous VIP demo was a success, saying "your response was again overwhelmingly positive." He looks at some Javelin customizations that caught their eye, and then talks a bit about plans to launch the game:

Our focus now shifts 100% to launch and beyond. Our development team is hard at work on finalizing our launch builds and beginning our countdown preparations. As I’ve mentioned previously, the launch version of the game has a long list of updates and improvements that were not in the demo builds. And, of course, launch will be the first time our community has access to the full game with all content.

There’s so much more than you saw in the demo and we can’t wait for you to play it. We’re also very hard at work on exciting post-launch content. You saw a small glimpse of it in the game Sunday. We’ll have much more to share on that soon.

Publisher Devolver Digital and developer Vile Monarch announce April is when they will spark up sales of Weedcraft Inc, their upcoming mogul game based on the marijuana industry. This doesn't involve peddling nickel bags (boy did I just date myself), as it focuses on commercial weed sales, since this becomes legal in more areas all the time. Word is: "Weedcraft Inc explores the industry of producing, breeding and selling weed in America in a deeply detailed tycoon-style game where players choose how they want to approach and build their business. Players can run smaller, mom-and-pop style businesses, but as in real life, the big opportunities often involve going the corporate route and expanding your weed empire nationally. Or, as nationally as you can manage, considering that pot remains illegal in 40 states…" Here's more:

Players can forge relationships with politicians, lobbyists and Instagram influencers to help influence laws that will help their business interests, as well as dig up dirt to crush their competition — all is fair in love, war, and weed empires. Careful, though. If you venture too far into grey legal territory you could end up on the wrong side of the law and see your empire crash down around you.

Just like the challenges facing today’s real-world weedtrepreneurs, Weedcraft Inc presents a complex set of systems for players to master in a format that is easy to play and doesn’t shy away from pointing out cultural, business and government hypocrisy when it comes to who wins and loses when it comes to the devil’s weed.

It seems like tempting fate to subtitle your game Fall Flat, but publisher Curve Digital announces that this did not come back to haunt developer No Brakes Games, saying that Human: Fall Flat has sold more than five million copies across various platforms, so sales of the physics-based puzzle/platformer did not remotely fall flat. The look to add to that impressive audience by offering the game for half off as part of the Lunar New Year Sale on Steam. They commemorate the occasion with the release of four new skins in the game: the Three Little Pigs, a Cowboy, a Rodeo Clown, and a Hiker. Word is they plan on continuing these free content releases throughout this year:

Curve Digital and No Brakes Games have been supporting Human: Fall Flat for the past two years by adding a steady stream of new, free content. Since its launch, Human: Fall Flat has added 8-player multiplayer across all platforms, while updates have introduced new stages, like the spooky Dark level that came to Steam in December and will appear on consoles soon. And that’s just the start, as Human: Fall Flat will continue to receive new content throughout 2019.

• Bad Pad -- Update version 1.5 released.
• Woodpunk -- CHINESE NEW YEAR UPDATE 1.02.03 - 04/02/2019.

• Fanatical's Lunar New Year Sale. Savings on over 1,000 games.
• Humble Book Bundle: Break into the Game Industry by CRC Press (pay what you want and help charity). Thanks RedEye9.
• Steam Daily Deal - .hack--G.U. Last Recode, 70% Off.
• Save 75% on Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion® on Steam.
• Save 60% on Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation on Steam.
• Save 50% on Offworld Trading Company on Steam.
• Save 33% on Star Control: Origins on Steam.
• Save 88% on Galactic Civilizations III on Steam.

• Respawn Discusses Entering The World Of Battle Royale - Game Informer.
• Mackey McCandlish interview -- Why Respawn made battle royale shooter Apex Legends - VentureBeat. "Avatar" was my favorite DOOM community level designer.
• "Isolation for all of us is corrosive"- The power of addressing social issues in games - GamesIndustry.biz. "Fullbright co-founder Steve Gaynor on making games about people rather than policy."

• Division 2 Hands-On Preview- Shared-World Comfort Food - IGN.

• Sony Stock Sees Significant Decline Due To Slowing Video Game Business.
• Apex Legends Is Now Available For Xbox One (Download Now For Free).
• Apex Legends, a Free-to-Play Battle Royale from the Makers of Titanfall 2, Launches Today – PlayStation.Blog.

• Samsung’s Galaxy S10 will be one of the first Wi-Fi 6 phones.
• To protect users’ privacy, iOS 12.2 will limit Web apps’ access to iPhone’s sensors.
• Intel Drone Light Show and Intel True View Technology Enhance Pepsi Super Bowl LIII Halftime Show and Super Bowl LIII Viewing Experience. Thanks Hypothermia.

• Alphabet beats Wall Street estimates, but spending worries investors.
• Slack makes confidential filing to go public.
• Netflix cancels Travelers, proving that our timeline has been abandoned.
• Netflix gave Gwyneth Paltrow money to make a 'Goop' series. So... cooch-egg videos?
• Corn Twitter comes for Bud Light after their anti-corn syrup Super Bowl ad.

• AMD Radeon VII Unboxing and Teardown Video - [H]ardOCP. Thanks RedEye9.
• AMD Radeon VII Unboxing & Preview - TechPowerUp.
• In the lab- AMD's Radeon VII graphics card - The Tech Report.
• AMD Radeon VII unboxed- the world's first 7nm gaming GPU - TweakTown.
• LG Launches Midrange 32UL750-W Monitor: DisplayHDR 600 with FreeSync & USB-C For $750.
• A quantum computer made from a single carbon molecule would destroy your PC.

• Windows Defender update: So secure, it wouldn't let Secure-Boot Windows PCs, er, boot.
• LibreOffice patches malicious code-execution bug, Apache OpenOffice... wait for it, wait for it... doesn't.

• Ajit Pai loses in court—judges overturn gutting of tribal broadband program.
• Man who stole $5M in cryptocurrency via SIM swap pleads guilty.
• Uber accident victim’s family just sued city of Tempe, Arizona, for $10M.

• Cyberpunk 2077 Development Team Is Over 60% Larger Than The Witcher 3 Team. Thanks RedEye9…
• CD Projekt Red Offers More Compensation To Witcher Creator Andrzej Sapkowski…
• League of Legends New free champion rotation- Caitlyn, Jarvan IV, Sylas and more…

Link of the Day: The Best Japanese Snow Sculptures Of 2019. Thanks Neutronbeam.

The promised Twitch reveal for Apex Legends seems to be a nothingburger so far, but the Apex Legends Website is live, saying the new battle royale game based on the Titanfall series is now available for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. The Windows edition is available on Origin, where they have a link to a trailer which YouTube currently lists as unavailable, so this unveiling is not going perfectly smoothly. Here's word on this free-to-play battle royale shooter:

Conquer with character in Apex Legends, a free-to-play* Battle Royale shooter where legendary characters with powerful abilities team up to battle for fame & fortune on the fringes of the Frontier. Master an ever-growing roster of diverse Legends, deep tactical squad play and bold new innovations that level up the Battle Royale experience—all within a rugged world where anything goes. Welcome to the next evolution of Battle Royale.

A Roster of Legendary Characters
-Master a growing roster of powerful Legends, each with their own unique personality, strengths and abilities that are easy to pick up but challenging to truly master.

Build Your Crew
-Choose your Legend and combine their unique skills together with other players to form the ultimate crew.

Strategic Battle Royale
-Use your abilities–and your wits–to make strategic calls on the fly, adapting your crew's strengths to meet new challenges as the match evolves.

Genre-Evolving Innovation
-Experience a brand-new array of innovative features that level up the Battle Royale genre, including Respawn Beacons, Smart Comms, Intelligent Inventory and an all-new way to drop into the action with Jumpmaster deployment.

Sweet, Sweet Loot
-Drop in and loot up with a host of powerful weapons, diverse attachments and useful armor to protect you in battle. After the fight, collect a wealth of cosmetic options for personalizing your character and weapons, and unlock new ways to show off during the match.

A Lunar New Year Sale is now underway on Steam, celebrating the Year of the Pig with the chance to pig out on game deals. The sale runs until February 11th, offering discounts on a load of games, including $5.00 off your first purchase of $30.00 or more. This includes a reward system involving tokens. You can see how this works on this page. Here's word:

We want to celebrate the new year by giving back.

Your tokens can be redeemed for a variety of different items including discounts, special profiles, badges and more! Additional tokens can be rewarded by purchasing games during the sale.

The Rewards Booth will be open until February 12, 2019 @ 1:00:00 pm EST.

The rumor that EA will today unveil a new game called Apex Legends from Respawn Entertainment is confirmed. A tweet from Vince Zampella teases the news with a trollish screenshot and a subsequent tweet tips us to tune into Twitch today at 11:00 am EST for a reveal. It is expected that this will turn out to be a battle royale game based on the mech combat of Respawn's Titanfall, and we should learn more soon enough. Word is "Our stream starts at 8am pt and we’ll tell you everything about Apex Legends. Everything." One further tweet from Vince clarifies that they won't actually get to the heart of the matter until closer to noon Pacific time, which is 3:00 pm on the east coast:

I want to clarify, 8am pst starts the @PlayApex teaser stream. It’s super cool, but it leads up to the full reveal of everything at noon. So you probably don’t have to call in sick, just fake food poisoning at lunch and go home early.

Electronic Arts has filed a new Trademark for Jade Empire, the action/RPG that was released in 2005. PCGamesN noticed this on this site which covers the same filing, and speculate this may or may not mean a new game in the series is coming. This may be for a new game, as this seems to focus on online gaming, saying: "Entertainment services, namely, providing an on-line computer game; Provision of information relating to electronic computer games provided via the Internet." On the other hand, this may just be legal housekeeping, as the original Jade Empire Trademark is marked "cancelled," saying a "change in registration has occurred." This seems to stem from EA's acquisition of BioWare since the original game was published by Microsoft Game Studios.

A post on Facebook for Metro Exodus walks back from the recent comment from a 4A Games developer suggesting the next installment in the Metro series might skip the PC platform if backlash to the game's Epic Games Store exclusivity caused a significant PC boycott. The new statement says this threat does not represent the actual stance of the game's publisher or developer:

The recent decision to move Metro Exodus from Steam to the Epic Game Store was made by Koch Media / Deep Silver alone.

The recent comments made by a member of the 4A Games development team do not reflect Deep Silver’s or 4A Games’ view on the future of the franchise. They do reflect the hurt and disappointment of a passionate individual who has seen what was previously nothing but positive goodwill towards his work turn to controversy due to a business decision he had no control over. We respectfully ask that any and all valid feedback over this decision is directed at Koch Media / Deep Silver, and not the developers at 4A Games.

The future release strategy of the Metro series lies with Koch Media / Deep Silver. Our decision to partner with Epic Games was based on the goal of investing in the future of the series and our development partner at 4A Games. We have every intention of continuing this franchise, and a PC version will always be at the heart of our plans.

NVIDIA offers new GeForce Game Ready 418.81 WHQL drivers, saying these support a new generation of GeForce RTX-powered laptops as well as new DLSS support in the Port Royale benchmark. They also offer a separate article on this additional benchmark support as well as this trailer showing the changes in action. Continue here to read the full story.

• This mod for Shadow of the Tomb Raider makes Lara look similar to her Rise of the Tomb Raider version.
• This mod brings Samus from Metroid Prime to Monster Hunter World.

• South Korean EA Game Changer “Core of Idea” talks Battlefield V.
• Pro Gamer Lied About Being In Elementary School.

• The 'Anthem' Beta Has Some Odd And Intriguing Performance Problems On The Xbox One X and PS4.
• Xbox's Heartwarming Super Bowl Ad Puts Spotlight On Adaptive Controller.
• World's FIRST 'adult gaming console' is shaped like a BOOB – and packed with saucy 18+ video games. Support provided by a bra if it goes tits up?

• Microsoft wants to bring Xbox Live cross-platform gaming to Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, and more. Thanks [H]ardOCP.
• WhatsApp update lets you hide chats using Face ID and Touch ID.
• Hulu teams with world record Instagram egg on a mental health ad. Seems familiar.

• Audible rolls out 'Choose Your Own Adventure' experience on Alexa.
• YouTube is trying to prevent angry mobs from abusing “dislike” button. Only happy mobs allowed to dislike things.
• The Freshly Minted Blockchain Gaming Platform by HashCash Makes Streaming Games Online Profitable. Not sure what this means: "Video streaming games is the star of third generation video games, often touted to be the best of them all."

• The World’s Fastest Supercomputer Breaks an AI Record. Thanks Slashdot.
• 2D material makes Wi-Fi energy harvesting more efficient.
• Bless the overlockers: In the data center world, liquid cooling is becoming king.
• Warby Parker dips into AR with the launch of virtual try-on. Clever.
• The Windows 3.0 File Manager is now available in the Microsoft Store. Thanks Ant.
• Microsoft is testing a fix for an annoying Windows 10 Photos app feature.
• Koenigsegg aims to build a 'CO2 neutral' combustion supercar.

• Siri Gives Teen List of Schools After Saying He'd Shoot One Up. Thanks [H]ardOCP.
• Russian spam accounts are still a big problem for Reddit.
• Bob Mould's catchy new music video about surveillance and paranoia.

• San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin proposes citywide ban on facial recognition technology. Thanks [H]ardOCP.
• FBI reportedly carried out a sting operation on Huawei at a burger joint.

• Atelier Rorona: ~The Alchemist of Arland~ DX on Christ Centered Gamer.

• ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-E Gaming Motherboard on Overclockers Club.
• Cooler Master MM830 Gaming Mouse on ThinkComputers.org.
• Sandberg Outdoor Solar Powerbank 24000 on TweakTown.

• Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. and 2K Name Industry Veteran Michael Condrey as President of New Game Development Studio in Silicon Valley…

Bad game and bad half-time make Homer something, something. Congrats to Max the Canadian for winning our small Pro Football Playoffs and Big Game Bracket 2018-2019. Max was the only one to correctly pick the winner of the Super Bowl, so if you're not happy with the outcome, blame Canada. I'm not going to admit to sharing this unhappiness, but I'm not going to deny it either. Let's just say it's going to be at least a week before I will consider watching a sportscast, in the hopes that I can avoid experiencing the praise being heaped on the champs. Basically I'm just counting the days until the NFL Draft.

R.I.P.: Julie Adams Dead: ‘Creature From the Black Lagoon’ Star Dies at 92.
R.I.P.: 'Young & the Restless' Star Kristoff St. John Dead at 52.

Links:	Thanks Ant.
Play:	Ascii world. Thanks Boing Boing. DRAWER SIMULATOR. Thanks Digg.
Links:	Zimmer: "Dark Knight" Score Was Too Loud. This Dark Fan Film Gives Moon Knight A Well-Deserved Live Action Debut. Thanks Neutronbeam.
Stories:	Basquiat used invisible ink to make secret drawings in his paintings.
Media:	Marvel Studios' Avengers- Endgame - Big Game TV Spot. Marvel Studios' Captain Marvel - "Big Game" TV Spot. Alita: Battle Angel - #SBLIII Commercial.