In the dusty, undeveloped wastelands of Western Mudos, cantankerous townsfolk find their settlements besieged by belligerent outlaws. Along comes Stranger, a tall, dark and enigmatic bounty hunter with a mission to capture troublemakers and scoundrels and return them to civilized townships for incarceration.

Activision Blizzard and Google announced today a multi-year strategic relationship to power new player experiences. Google Cloud will serve as the preferred provider for Activision Blizzard's game hosting infrastructure and YouTube as its exclusive streaming partner worldwide, excluding China, for live broadcasts of its popular esports leagues and events — including Overwatch League, Call of Duty League, Hearthstone Esports, and more.

With hundreds of millions of monthly active users around the world, Activision Blizzard sought a partner to help enhance its gaming infrastructure, as well as deliver superior, low-latency player experiences. The company turned to Google Cloud because of its highly reliable global footprint, advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, and commitment to open source, creating a platform for building future gaming innovations.

Players will benefit by experiencing premium network quality-of-service, including low latency and packet loss when playing high-fidelity games on any device. They will also have optimal personalized interactions, as Activision Blizzard can tap into Google Cloud's AI tools to offer curated recommendations for in-game offers and differentiated gaming experiences.

"We've worked closely with Activision Blizzard for the past few years across mobile titles to boost its analytics capabilities and overall player experience," said Sunil Rayan, Head of Gaming, Google Cloud. "We are excited to now expand our relationship and help power one of the largest and most renowned game developers in the world."

"We're excited to partner with Google to drive the next generation of gaming innovation for the industry. Google Cloud's best-in-class infrastructure gives us the confidence to deliver great entertainment to our fans around the world," said Jacques Erasmus, Chief Information Officer, Activision Blizzard.

Additionally, beginning this week, YouTube will host the official live broadcasts of Activision Blizzard's popular esports leagues and events including the newly created Call of Duty League, Overwatch League, Hearthstone Esports, and more. The inaugural Call of Duty League season kicks off on Friday, January 24, with 12 teams competing in Minnesota, and the Overwatch League's 2020 season will follow on February 8. All competitions will be livestreamed on each league's YouTube channel and will include archived and other special content.

"With more than 200 million gamers a day watching more than 50 billion hours of gaming content per year, YouTube provides gamers and their passionate fans with the most popular video gaming platform in the world," said Ryan Wyatt, Head of Gaming, YouTube. "Both the Overwatch League and Call of Duty League are the quintessential examples of world class esports content. As a former Call of Duty esports commentator myself, I couldn't be more excited for Activision Blizzard to choose YouTube as its exclusive home for the digital live streaming of both leagues. This partnership further demonstrates our dedication to having a world class live streaming product for gaming."

"This is an exciting year for Activision Blizzard Esports as we head into the inaugural season of Call of Duty League and our first ever season of homestands for Overwatch League all around the world," said Pete Vlastelica, CEO of Activision Blizzard Esports. "It's our mission to deliver high-quality competitive entertainment that our fans can follow globally, live or on-demand, and to celebrate our players as the superstars that they are. This partnership will help us deliver on that promise at new levels, by combining our passionate communities of fans and players with YouTube's powerful content platform and exciting history of supporting next-generation entertainment."

This collaboration with Activision Blizzard represents Google's ongoing commitment to supporting game developer success around the globe. Across its business units, Google offers comprehensive solutions for game developers, empowering them to create great games, connect with players, and scale their businesses.

This weekend, explore a fantastical world and defeat enemies using real-life exercises with Ring Fit Adventure.

Visit select GameStop stores on Saturday from 1:00pm – 4:00pm (local time).

The new Ring-Con™ and Leg Strap accessories respond to your real-world movements, allowing the game to turn them into in-game actions. With additional minigames and customizable workout routines, Ring Fit Adventure is a great escape for players of all skill levels and schedules.

Earthfall: Alien Horde has been updated to Version 1.01 on Switch. While we don't have patch notes, we've heard that the game's visuals have been improved, loading time has been sped up, and the game runs better overall. You can check out some footage of the patch in action above.

Nintendo Minute is never a minute! This week we’re taking a stroll through the eShop and picking out a game for each other to play. We hope you give these games a try. If you do, let us know what you think. As always, thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you next week!

Check out some early gameplay of Joker in Mortal Kombat 11 along with his two disturbingly comical fatalities.

When Bandai Namco started work on Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions, they had plans to release it in two regions. The game would get a release in Japan, and then a localization for Latin America. The move for Latin America was due to soccer's immense popularity in the region. What made Bandai Namco decide to expand the game's reach to North America? Bandai Namco director of brand marketing Dennis Lee explained in an interview with USGamer.

"When we evaluated the game, we realized that it was a really fun game. So even if they don't know Tsubasa and the characters, soccer fans and fans of arcade-style sports games can have a really good time playing it. Because of that, we decided that we couldn't just release it in Latin America."

There's no denying that Mario games are special. There's a reason why the character has been around so long, and continues to be wildly popular! Even other devs know how fantastic the character is, and they're more than willing to share their thoughts on why.

The latest issue of Retro Gamer includes comments from Jon Romero, Derek Yu, and Ste Pickford on Mario's success. See what they had to say below.

- "the amazing control and the huge amount of variety in the eight worlds" led to id Software pitching a PC conversion of Super Mario Bros 3 to Nintendo
- Ste Pickford is impressed by Mario's 'jumping on enemies to kill them' mechanic, saying "it annoys me when it's used in other games as it feels like a unique feature of Mario, and one that you shouldn't rip off."
- Derek Yu's Spelunky was inspired by the Super Mario series
- Derek says the, "one thing I studied closely while working on Spelunky were the little touches in Mario games - the 'poofs' that appear when Mario runs, the sparkles that appear when he grabs a coin, etc. For me, a big reason why Mario is so enjoyable are those flourishes that we're not always conscious of but we definitely feel as we play."

Another year, another GDC survey. This time around, 4,000 respondents answered a number of questions about where they plan on bringing their next projects. Here's what the respondents had to say about the Switch.

- 17% are bringing their current game to Switch
- 19% are planning their next game for Switch
- 37% are interested in Switch

Of course, these numbers make a lot more sense when you measure them against other platforms. Here's what devs had to say about PS4/XB1/PS5/Xbox Series X.

- 11% are bringing their current game to PS5
- 23% are planning their next game for PS5
- 9% are bringing their current game to Xbox Series X
- 17% are planning their next game for Xbox Series X
- 25% are bringing their current game to PS4
- 20% are planning their next game for PS4
- 23% are bringing their their current game to Xbox One
- 20% are planning their next game for Xbox One

First up, a little backstory for those who don't know. During the development of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Nintendo used Arwing models to test the flight patterns of Volvagia, alongside the Z-targeting system. This was left in the game's code, and discovered a number of years later by modders.

Since then, we've seen countless videos of people using cheats and mods to make the Arwings spawn in-game. That's what makes today's video that much more impressive. It marks the very first time that someone has gotten the Arwings to spawn in-game without using cheat codes or mods.

This player in particular got the Arwings to spawn via "arbitrary code execution." This method is used by speedrunners to force the game to load and run the save file name as if it's game code. The end result in this instance is some attacking Arwings!