TODAY: Animal Crossing devs wanted to release early to cheer us up — Ready at Dawn CTO thinks the PlayStation 5 is going to be revolutionary — Looks like a Modern Warfare 2 remaster is on the way

Pokemon News and Events

Sword & Shield 'Extreme Speed! Single Battles!' online competition begins

Pokémon Sword & Shield's next big online competition is now underway! The focus is on time-limited Single Battles where you need to think quickly and make split-second decisions to win.

Dynamax and Pokémon Preview are banned, but any regular Pokémon available in Sword & Shield are eligible, including those transferred from the Pokémon Home service.

Extreme Speed! Single Battles! rules:

• Match time: 10 minutes
• Player time: 5 minutes
• Turn time: 10 seconds
• Pokémon Select Time: 30 seconds
• Battles per day: 15
• Last from March 20th until March 22nd
• Participants receive 50BP when rankings go live

Wild Area update: There is also new information about the current Max Raid Battle event. Every non-Gigantamax Pokémon in 3-Star raids and above will be guaranteed to have a Hidden Ability, according Serebii.net.

Time For A Quick Daily Quiz?

Which Splinter Cell game introduced co-op multiplayer to the series?

• Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
• Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
• Splinter Cell: Double Cell
• Splinter Cell: Conviction

The answer will be revealed at the bottom of today's issue. Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss what the answer could be.

Daily Fact

We could all have been Super Sonic

Sega's Team Sonic tried to reboot Sonic the Hedgehog for seventh-generation consoles back in 2006, and one of the big ideas was to let the player go Super Sonic whenever our spiky little hedgehog hearts desired. Unfortunately the idea didn't survive until release, but exploiting some bugs can earn you the Rainbow Gem.

This was the gem that would allow you to go Super Sonic, and the animation is still in there – unfortunately you just drop to the ground after it has finished playing. Other bugs allows you to exploit more gems that were meant to be time-limited and deplete a meter through use. Since they don't, you can get incredible advantages and practically skip entire stages of the game. Gotta go fast!

Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss today's fact.

Animal Crossing Escapism

Animal Crossing: New Horizons offers escape from these disheartening times

Like all entertainment, video games are a potent source of escapism and these are definitely escapist times.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons' developers hope their game can help people enjoy themselves during the on-going crisis, and some of them even pleaded with Nintendo to release the game earlier.

“I am very disheartened and saddened by the events happening across the world,” New Horizons producer Hisashi Nogami told The Verge. “Considering the timing, we hope that a lot of the Animal Crossing fans will use this as an escape, so they can enjoy themselves during this difficult time.”

Something positive:”It’s the kind of game you want to enjoy with other people, and talk about it, and share the experience with your friends and family,” said game director Aya Kyogoku. “So I think that a global, simultaneous release is a really good approach for the franchise.”

Global launch today: Animal Crossing: New Horizons is launching worldwide today, March 20th. The last major instalment in the series was Animal Crossing: New Leaf, which launched in 2012 and took months to reach all territories.

Next-Gen Revolution

PlayStation 5 a “revolutionary” console

Ready at Dawn co-founder and CTO Andrea Pessino believes that the PlayStation 5 is “one of the most revolutionary, inspired” consoles ever conceived.

More or less clueless gamers berated Sony for offering what appears to be slightly less powerful hardware than Microsoft, but Pessino believes Sony's much faster SSD storage will make all the difference.

Time will tell: “Dollar bet: within a year from its launch gamers will fully appreciate that the PlayStation 5 is one of the most revolutionary, inspired home consoles ever designed, and will feel silly for having spent energy arguing about “teraflops” and other similarly misunderstood specs,” Pessino tweeted.

Architecture: He dismissed using abstract measures like floating point operations per second to determine how powerful hardware is because theoretical performance means very little if there's no way to actually use it: “...incremental hardware improvements are important, but abstractions, APIs, integration, and most of all *architecture* are even more so.” PlayStation 5 is expected to launch this holiday season.

What Else Happened Today?

• Sam Fisher will infiltrate Ghost Recon Breakpoint in a special crossover on March 24th
• Sunset Harbour expansion for Cities: Skylines is out March 26th, adding new buildings and transport options as well as five more maps
• GameStop remains open despite COVID-19 outbreak according to an internal company memo, where the company reveals their belief that they constitute essential retail. What will Reggie say?
• Every Xbox One game is playable on Xbox Series X according to Microsoft. And yes, that includes all the older Xbox games compatible with the Xbox One!
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Remastered rated in South Korea! The South Korean ratings board lists Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered on their website. No mention of multiplayer ... yet

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Brotherhood United Switch Code

You could be in with a chance to receive a Nintendo Switch code for Brotherhood United, if you refer DailyBits to a friend! You can use our widget to start earning your referrals, which you can build up throughout the year giving you a greater chance of being selected.

Brotherhood United is currently available on the Nintendo eShop for $8.99 and we've got a code to hand out today. This is open to all our readers today.

When the time of crisis comes and one of your friends is captured, you gotta stand your ground and fight for your partners. When someone messes with the brotherhood, you make sure they pay for that, no matter what. In Brotherhood United no partner is left behind. Shoot your way through the hordes of the enemy army, blow them all away, but do it with style, choose your own outfit and make sure they will remember you. Pick your guns and fight giant bosses, but dont forget the beer!

Previous Winners:

• Pepijn Tuil, Netherlands - Breeder Homegrown (Switch)

Quiz Answer - Did You Get It Right?

Which Splinter Cell game introduced co-op multiplayer to the series?

Answer: Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory!

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow introduced the much-loved Spies vs. Mercs mode to the series, but Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory was the first game to offer a co-op campaign.

Taking place at the same time as Sam Fisher's story, the campaign puts you and a buddy in charge of Agent One and Agent Two, Splinter Cell agents in training, as they flit around the globe providing support to Third Echelon missions.

But if that makes you wanna grab a couple of copies and a friend, you're out of luck: The servers for the PC version was shut down in 2016. But if you fire up any of the console versions, you can play in splitscreen mode! The Xbox version is the definitive one, featuring additional missions.

Today's issue of DailyBits was written by Simon Priest, Gavin Herman, Erlend Grefsrud and Jamie Davey.