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The Sonic the Hedgehog movie has enjoyed a strong first weekend at the US box office, opening to $57 million, according to Box Office Mojo. This eclipses even the most generous of pre-release expectations, and means that the movie has now had the best opening weekend ever for a movie based on a game, surpassing Pokemon: Detective Pikachu’s $54.3 million opening.

It’s worth noting that the $57 million figure is an estimate, and although eventual figures tend to trend up rather than down, there’s always the possibility that the movie made slightly less than expected (Pokemon: Detective Pikachu was originally reported to have made $58 million in its opening weekend, which was later revised.)

In any case, it’s a good opening for the movie, which has attracted mixed reviews (although GameSpot’s review from Phil Hornshaw was very positive, as were many others.) The movie is expected to do well at the box office on President’s Day (February 17), too. The movie has made an additional $43 million outside of the US so far.

Recent successful movies based on games have made the majority of their money overseas. Warcraft and Tomb Raider succeeded internationally while doing poorly in the US, while Resident Evil: The Final Chapter made less than 10% of its money domestically. This makes Sonic’s opening weekend in the US all the more unique.

Meanwhile, Birds of Prey, which opened lower than expected last weekend, held well compared to many other DC movies. It landed in second place with an estimated $17.1 million over the weekend, dropping 48%. So far it has made $61,673,302 in the USA, and $145,273,302 worldwide.

Elsewhere, Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island brought in $12.4 million, and Parasite’s historic Oscar victory resulted in a $5.5 million weekend.

Here’s the domestic top 10 for the weekend of February 14-16, 2020. The full list is available at Box Office Mojo.

1. Sonic the Hedgehog: $57 million
2. Birds of Prey: $17.115 million
3. Fantasy Island: $12.4 million
4. The Photograph: $12.27 million
5. Bad Boys for Life: $11.305 million
6. 1917: $8.090 million
7. Jumanji: The Next Level: $5.7 million
8. Parasite: $5.5 million
9. Dolittle: $5.05 million
10. Downhill: $4.671 million

The NPD Group has released its latest monthly sales report, revealing which games, consoles, and accessories sold the best in January 2020 in the United States.

Starting with games, Dragon Ball Z: Kakorot was the month’s top-seller, and its launch-month sales were the third-highest in franchise history, following Dragon Ball: Fighterz and Dragon Ball Z: Budokai. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare finished No. 2 in January, marking the first month since release that it fell to the second sales position. While it’s dropped down the charts, it remains the best-selling game over the past 12 months.

Another notable move was made by Grand Theft Auto V, which re-entered the Top 5 for the first time since August 2019. As announced previously, GTA 5 is the best-selling video game in history for the United States.

Total sales for games dropped 31 percent to $311 million. The downturn was driven by a difficult comparison to January 2019 which saw the release of big games like Kingdom Hearts III and Resident Evil 2.

Moving to hardware, the Nintendo Switch was January 2020’s best-selling console in terms of unit and dollar sales. It wasn’t all good news, however, as the Switch, the PS4, and the Xbox One all experienced year-over-year sales declines in January, which led to a 35 percent decrease in sales year-over-year to $129 million. January is historically a difficult month for console sales, as it follows the very busy holiday shopping season.

In terms of accessories, the Xbox Elite Series 2 controller was the top-seller in January 2020, which is a position it’s held since launch in November. According to the NPD, it’s the fifth fastest-selling accessory in US history. Total spending on accessories and game card sales for January 2020 reached $238 million, which is down 11 percent.

Total spending for January 2020–comprising games, hardware, and accessories–amounted to $678 million, which is down 26 percent. The NPD said this downturn was attributed mainly to a “lighter” slate of new releases and “late cycle hardware dynamics” for the PS4 and Xbox One.

With the PS4 and Xbox One entering the end of their lifecycles, it’s expected that sales would decrease. Both Sony and Microsoft have new consoles coming later this year in the form of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

Best-Selling January 2020 Games (US)

1. Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
3. Madden NFL 20
4. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
5. Grand Theft Auto V
6. NBA 2K20
7. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate*
8. Mario Kart 8*
9. Ring Fit Adventure
10. Red Dead Redemption II
11. Minecraft#
12. Pokemon Sword
13. Luigi’s Mansion 3*
14. Star Wars: Battlefront II
15. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*
16. Need for Speed: Heat
17. FIFA 20
18. Just Dance 2020
19. Mortal Kombat 11
20. Pokemon Shield*

*Digital sales not included

#Digital sales PlayStation and Xbox included

There are sendoffs, and then there’s whatever just happened on HQ Trivia’s final broadcast.

The popular live trivia game app company, which pitted contestants against countless others for a chance at real-world money, has shut down after a last-minute acquisition attempt fell through, leaving the company to lay off its 25 employees and shut its doors. What’s a broke company to do for their last ever broadcast? Host Matt Richards took $5 out of his own pocket for the show’s last prize pool.

And then he flipped off the audience and said he would crap on the homes of every troll in the game’s chatroom.

“Not going to lie, this [expletive] sucks,” Richards said. “This is the last HQ ever.”

With a bottle of champagne sitting front and center before the camera, Richards and co-host Anna Roisman proceeded to give not one single crap for their final broadcast, cracking jokes, swearing loudly, all while seemingly a bit drunk. The pair also jokingly begged the viewers to hire them and verged on tears every now and then.

Some choice quotes.

“I was never allowed to plug [expletive] on HQ. Please follow my podcast. Unemployed With Anna Roisman.” – Roisman.

“I used to never wear pants here when I started at HQ Trivia.” – Richards

“Should HQ shut down? No, yes, or [expletive] no!” – Richards, posing a trivia question to the audience.

“I met a couple that told me HQ was part of their foreplay.” – Richards.

HQ Trivia launched back in 2017, quickly skyrocketing to popularity with trivia lovers everywhere hoping to make a buck. Original host Scott Rogowsky proved popular as well. So popular that he announced last April that he was leaving HQ Trivia to focus on a baseball show on the sports streaming service DAZN. The loss of Rogowsky, internal struggles at the company, and the introduction of an unpopular points-based scoring system helped bring the app’s popularity crashing down. HQ’s former CEO and co-founder Colin Kroll also died of a drug overdose in December 2018.

The crew closed out the broadcast with an emotional rendition of “Memory” from the musical Cats, before Richards sprays the studio and himself with the champagne.

At least the hosts can say they went out with a bang, and then some.

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Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.

An early, playable Xbox build of Starcraft Ghost, the canceled third-person shooter set in Blizzard’s Starcraft universe, has reportedly leaked online, according to Kotaku. The footage gives us a major look into Blizzard’s troubled offshoot game.

Images of Starcraft Ghost appeared on Twitter user Andrew Borman’s feed Sunday morning, who said that the images were posted anonymously in Xbox forums.

Who would have thought a month ago that Starcraft Ghost would leak in some form? pic.twitter.com/24wCp4XBsE

— Andrew Borman (@Borman18) February 16, 2020

If a couple of screenshots aren’t enough for you, another person has uploaded about 11 minutes of footage from Starcraft Ghost to YouTube. YouTuber Leers Meneses shared the footage, which appears to be from the third mission of the same game that Borman earlier tweeted about.

In the footage, we can see Starcraft Ghost protagonist Nova running around a very early 2000’s 3D alien planet, climbing some ledges, and firing on a massive alien with her Gauss Rifle, which, instead of firing projectiles, appears to call down a Hammer of Dawn-style energy beam. Nova later ziplines across a battlefield.

The gameplay itself seems pretty bog standard, even by early 2000s standards (to say nothing of the usual Blizzard polish), which may indicate at least one reason the game struggled to reach completion. Meneses says he used a modded Xbox 360 to access the game.

Another user by the name of Delso Bezerra appears to have uploaded separate footage of Starcraft Ghost as well. The footage shows a noticeably more visually polished version of Starcraft Ghost, featuring a lot of similar running and shooting gameplay.

Kotaku later updated its story saying a source had provided a link to the build of Starcraft Ghost that people have managed to get their hands on, saying it was from a dev kit of the game.

Starcraft Ghost was announced in 2002, and was originally going to launch on the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Gamecube. Blizzard first worked with developer Nihilistic Software, then later Swingin’ Ape Studios. After several delays in development, the game was put on an indefinite hold in 2006. Former Blizzard president Mike Morhaime put the final nail in the coffin of Starcraft Ghost by confirming its cancellation in 2014.

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All that said, it looks like this Xbox build of Starcraft Ghost is now out in the wild proper now, so hardcore fans will almost certainly be able to get their hands on it if they know where to look.

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Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.

Tomb Raider: The Dark Angel Symphony (Reborn in Shadows), an album featuring remakes of several songs from Peter Connelly’s soundtracks for numerous Tomb Raider games, is available to stream now across several major music services. The album, which resulted from a successful Kickstarter campaign, collects music from Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider: Chronicles, and Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.

The Kickstarter campaign raised £70,091 against a £60,000 goal; according to the album’s website, the final cost of creating the album was £150,000, most of it funded out of pocket by the creative team behind it. It collects remasters of various tracks alongside new orchestral recordings.

Talking to VG247, producer Ash Kapriélov says that many of the tracks will sound very different compared to their in-game equivalents. “Music from Tomb Raider 4 and 5 was completely synthesised so we have some tracks rearranged and performed by the actual orchestra,” he says.

Kapriélov says that he got the idea during “a big Tomb Raider sleepover” at a friend’s place in 2016, when he and said friend stayed up late playing games from the series. He tracked down Connelly and pitched the idea to him online.

The rest of the interview is rather heartwarming–Kapriélov credits the series for saving his life.

The most recent game in the Tomb Raider series was 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider. A new Tomb Raider film is due to release March 19, 2021, with Ben Wheatley (High-Rise, Free Fire) directing.

Ubisoft has shared more details about when Rainbow Six Siege will launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and how they’ll work with existing versions of the game. Game director Leroy Athanassoff told WindowsCentral that Rainbow Six Siege will be available for both next-generation consoles at launch, or at least that is the current “target.”

It makes sense that Siege will be available on the new consoles from day one, given Sony and Microsoft have already come forward to say the PS5 and Xbox Series X will support PS4 and Xbox One games, respectively. The Xbox Series X will also play Xbox 360 and original Xbox games, but Sony has yet to clarify its position on backwards compatibility beyond the confirmation that the system will play PS4 games.

The PS5 and Xbox Series X are scheduled to launch in Holiday 2020, so fans can expect Rainbow Six Siege to be playable on these systems around then.

Also in the interview, Athanassoff said there will be cross-generation multiplayer support, which will connect the PS4 and PS5 and the Xbox One and Xbox Series X communities. The game director said Ubisoft is working with Sony and Microsoft to allow cross-platform play between PS4 and Xbox One, but the decision will come down to the two hardware-makers.

“This is more a discussion between Microsoft and Sony,” Athanassoff said. “We would love to be fully cross-play–have Xbox players matchmaking against the PlayStation players. We are ready to support that. And hopefully, this will happen because as I said, it’s a general move in the industry, and there is nothing that can prevent that. It’s just a matter of time before it happens.”

One feature that Rainbow Six Siege will probably not introduce is cross-play between console and PC, due to the advantage that PC players would have with keyboard and mouse controls. If the game ever does add this, it would be an opt-in feature, Athanassoff said.

“If you want to match with these players, to have better matchmaking, or whatever, and get your ass kicked by a keyboard and mouse, up to you,” he said.

With 50 million registered accounts, Rainbow Six Siege is still going very strong, nearly five years after it came out in 2015. Ubisoft has supported the game with new content and update on a regular basis, and this includes a big change to the Tachanka operator.

Instead of releasing a sequel, Ubisoft plans to support Rainbow Six Siege with the goal of creating 100 more operators over the next decade.

The next Rainbow Six game is Rainbow Six: Quarantine, which is a three-player tactical co-op shooter that’s in development for PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC, in addition to current-generation consoles.

For the first time ever, an operator in Rainbow Six Siege is getting a significant overhaul and ditching their primary weapon. Tachanka is dropping his turret weapon in favor of a grenade launcher as part of a Year 5 update for the character. Tachanka has long struggled for relevancy in the game, but that looks set to change.

IGN is reporting that while the character will still have access to the firepower of a DP28 LMG, which will now be his primary weapon. His new gadget will be the Kulakov Incendiary Grenade Launcher, which can be used to deny opponents access to certain parts of the map. This means that the character will no longer be tied to one location while attacking with their gadget.

According to art director Alex Karpazis, this new weapon pairing will make the character more effective and versatile. “The design team thought it worked super well with the legend of his weapon. And it ties in well with his kit. He can roam, and he can make holes to shoot his incendiary grenades through.”

You’ll also finally be able to remove Tachanka’s helmet and see his face with the character’s new cosmetic items, should you want to.

The name “Tachanka” is actually a reference to a horse-drawn Russian machine turret, but the character will retain the name while ditching their namesake.

Rainbow Six Siege has been out for over five years now, but continues to be huge. Its next big update is called Void Edge, which will introduce two new operators.

Warning: this review contains full spoilers for Batwoman: Season 1, Episode 12! If you need a refresher on where we left off, here’s our review for Season 1, Episode 11.

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At this point it seems safe to say no Arrowverse series has benefited more from Crisis on Infinite Earths than Batwoman. Sure, Supergirl has arguably been affected more in terms of the overall status quo, but that series was already on solid footing before the crossover. It’s not so much that life in Gotham City has drastically changed in this new Earth-Prime era, but that Batwoman has used the foundation of Crisis to address its greatest recurring flaw.

If Alice has been the regular weak link in the Season 1 formula, she’s a whole lot better off thanks to these most recent two installments. “An Un-Birthday Present” and now “Take Your Choice” have gone a long way toward humanizing this villain (a process previously reserved for the flashback scenes) and giving her a clearer and more understandable set of motivations. The series has quickly managed to flip the script on the new status quo established in the midseason finale. Where once Alice was the heartless villain who drove a wedge right through the Kane family, now she’s become the loner betrayed by one of the two people she cares for the most.

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Rachel Skarsten has never really managed to nail that dreamy, surreal quality that makes Alice such a unique villain in the comics. Her Alice performance is very stiff and forced. By now it’s clear that’s an intentional choice on the show’s part, as recent episodes have really started to emphasize how much this persona was created as a coping mechanism for a young Beth Kane. Even so, it often feels like there’s been something lost in translation with Alice. “Take Your Choice,” more than any other episode before it, succeeds by downplaying Alice’s supervillain shenanigans and trying to find the fragile human beneath the cruel facade.

In the process, Skarsten is able to shine in a way she’s never managed before. She excels here in playing two vastly different versions of the same character – both of whom are confronting the possibility of their imminent death. That these two Beths look and behave so differently only highlights the tragedy of Alice and how much was taken from the Kane family when she vanished. There are repeated signs that Alice isn’t as cruel or heartless as she’d like the city to believe, including the reveal she purposely saved Mary’s life and the very genuine shock and remorse she feels after realizing Kate came not to save her, but to watch her die. That scene may well be the highlight of the series so far. Though Alice’s hallucination of a vengeful Catherine come to gloat is a close second. An inspired use of a character we all assumed had run her course.

In general, this episode makes terrific use of what could have been a very silly and convoluted premise. It proves there’s still room in the Arrowverse for more grounded, metahuman-free stories even in a world of Kryptonians, speedsters and time travelers. The idea that the universe can only permit one Beth Kane to live creates a palpable tension that only grows over the course of the episode. With the Crows hunting for Alice and Kate struggling to find some way to save her new sister without dooming the old, there’s a certainty that nothing is going to work out well for our heroes. The only question is how exactly Kate’s reunion with Beth will end badly.

The reveal is certainly satisfying. Faced with an impossible choice, Kate chooses the sensible option – save the sister who isn’t a homicidal maniac. Instead, she winds up enduring all the heartache of watching Alice die without managing to save Beth in the end. Just as Alice gave Kate reason to loathe her in the midseason finale, now Alice has reason to despise the only family she has left. Somehow, this episode has managed to make that rivalry even more personal.

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My only disappointment with the way things play out is that there would have been a lot of potential in the idea of the two Beths merging to form a new Beth who remembers both lives. What does that do to her mind and her plans for Gotham? But to be fair, that’s me complaining about the story I want to see rather than the story being told. And anyway, it’s not impossible the series won’t still go down that road.

Another big plus is that “Take Your Choice” gives a better sense of how the various pieces of Season 1 fit together, with Sebastian Roche’s Dr. Campbell taking on a more prominent role and revealing himself to be Dr. Cartwright in disguise. Cartwright is quickly shaping up to be the real endgame villain of Season 1. His quietly sadistic personality and ability to hide in plain sight make him well-suited to the task. His is a brand of evil that could only exist in Gotham, and I look forward to seeing him step into the spotlight in the weeks to come.