Tag Archives: Arts & Entertainment

Stalker 2 has been delayed (again) until November 20

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The long-anticipated Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl has been delayed yet again, this time until November 20. It was supposed to come out on September 5. This is just the latest delay in a development cycle that stretches all the way back to 2010. That’s 14 years. The longest delay in gaming history is Duke Nukem Forever, at 15 years.

What’s taking so long? At first, it was funding issues. Developer GSC Game World nearly shut down, but managed to weather the storm. Next, the makers spent a whole lot of time perfecting various mechanics and features, including a new way to render human teeth.

Real world events intervened to continue the delay. Russia invaded Ukraine and GSC was based in Kyiv. The game was put on hold as the staff relocated to Prague, eventually picking back up on development in 2022. After that, the game was supposed to (finally) release in December of last year.

However, there were some kinks to work out, so the launch was pushed to September 5, 2024. It looks like the bugs are still popping up, because now it’s set for November.

“We know you might be tired of waiting, and we truly appreciate your patience. These two additional months will give us the chance to fix more ‘unexpected anomalies’ (or simply ‘bugs’ as you call them),” wrote Yevhen Grygorovych, Game Director at GSC Game World, in a press release. “We’re just as eager as you are to finally release the game and for you to experience it for yourself.”

Who knows if it’ll actually come out this November, but it’s looking more and more likely. GSC also announced the pending release of a deep-dive video that will offer “the most comprehensive look yet into the game," with a premiere date of August 12. This video will include developer interviews, new in-game footage and a full walkthrough of a story quest.

For the uninitiated, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a sequel to the hit 2007 FPS. The forthcoming follow-up brings some survival horror mechanics into the mix, which should be fun. There are plenty of trailers to check out which, you know, tends to happen when a game has been in development for 14 years.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/stalker-2-has-been-delayed-again-until-november-20-173259981.html?src=rss

That Disney+, Hulu and Max streaming bundle is now available

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We knew it was coming and now it’s here. Disney has entered into a partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery to offer an ad-free streaming bundle that includes Disney+, Hulu and Max. The combo pack costs $30 per month, which is a savings of $6 per month when you add it all up. A Disney+ and Hulu bundle costs $20 per month and ad-free Max costs $16 per month, so this is a pretty good deal.

If you want to save even more money and don’t mind lengthy ad breaks interrupting prestige dramas that weren’t made with advertisements in mind, there’s an ad-filled version of this bundle available for $17 per month. You still get access to all of the content from the three streamers. You also get a bunch of ads. This is likely the most budget-friendly way to get your eyeballs on Game of Thrones and Star Wars content.

Speaking of, Disney+ is the home to all things Star Wars, including The Acolyte, which has proven to be a pretty big hit for the platform and a great showcase for laser sword tomfoolery. The platform is also Marvel HQ, with Agatha All Along and that new Daredevil show premiering in the near future.

In my humble opinion, Disney+ would be well-served by developing some decent shows outside of its two tentpole franchises, but that’s where Hulu comes in. This streamer is home to a little global phenomenon called The Bear, in addition to the cringefest Pen15, the cartoon Solar Opposites and much more. Hulu also streams TV shows the day after they air from networks like FX and ABC. That means you can use it to watch both Shōgun and Abbott Elementary.

As for Max, you know the drill. It’s HBO that for some reason has been rebranded to suit some corporate mandate nobody quite understands. That means access to the iconic cable network’s entire catalog, including The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, The Wire and so much more. It also streams new shows like House of the Dragon and The Regime.

Disney also owns ESPN, which is currently prepping a new streaming sports service by teaming up with Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Sports. This joint operation will stream events from the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA when it launches later this year. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/that-disney-hulu-and-max-streaming-bundle-is-now-available-152015788.html?src=rss

Studio Ghibli’s The Boy and the Heron arrives on Max in September

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Back in March, Warner Bros. Discovery's Max announced that it's extending its exclusive US streaming rights for Studio Ghibli in a new multiyear agreement. As part of that deal, Ghibli agreed to make Hayao Miyazaki's first film in a decade, The Boy and the Heron, available on Max later this year. Now, the streaming service has revealed that the fantasy adventure film will be available to stream on Max starting on September 6. To note, Studio Ghibli first embraced streaming in 2020 when it gave Netflix and Max the rights to all its films, including Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle and My Neighbor Totoro.

Written and directed by Miyazaki, The Boy and the Heron revolves around a boy named Mahito who moves to his family's countryside estate after the death of his mother. It was there where he encounters a gray heron, which marks the beginning of a fantastical adventure with magic, wizards, spirits and anthropomorphic animals. Like all other Miyazaki films, The Boy and the Heron contains philosophical messages weaved into Mahito's journey as he faces the dangers of an unfamiliar world to find his ill stepmother who has disappeared into the forest. 

The Boy and the Heron's English dub features some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Christian Bale voices Mahito's father Shoichi, Robert Pattinson voices the grey heron, Florence Pugh is the magical fisherwoman Kiriko while Dave Bautista voices the film's main antagonist, the Parakeet King. The cast also includes Mark Hamill, Willem Dafoe, Gemma Chan, Karen Fukuhara and Luca Padovan as Mahito. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/studio-ghiblis-the-boy-and-the-heron-arrives-on-max-in-september-140046955.html?src=rss

MultiVersus leak suggests Barbie and Mad Max tie-ins are on the way

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MultiVersus, the platform fighter that pulls from Warner Bros. properties, could be getting a whole bunch of new stages and characters, according to a report by Kotaku. This includes content from the film Barbie and the Mad Max universe, in addition to more Adventure Land stuff and a potential tie-in with the forthcoming Beetlejuice sequel. WB owns a whole bunch of stuff, so this could get interesting.

The reporting is sourced from a fairly reputable dataminer on X, who published receipts in the form of screengrabs and the like. These images include an early version of a potential Barbie Land stage, complete with palm trees and, of course, a bright pink color palette. 

There’s also a picture that allegedly depicts a stage based on Quidditch, the broom-based sport from Harry Potter that makes absolutely zero sense. Other leaked stages include the wastelands from Mad Max, a background inspired by Powerpuff Girls and one pulled from the cartoon Samurai Jack.

Speaking of those last two, both the Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack will be showing up as playable characters. Samurai Jack makes for an interesting addition, being as how fighting is basically his whole thing. The dataminer has also indicated that Beetlejuice will soon be a playable character, likely coinciding with the September 6 release date of the sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. This has been confirmed by the developer, as has Samurai Jack. Adventure Time’s resident vampire bassist Marceline could also be joining the roster.

It’s worth noting that this information isn’t set in stone. Many of the stages suggested by the X user look to be extremely early in development and the same goes for some of the playable characters. It’s entirely possible, and likely, that WB and Ready Player Games are always tinkering with new stages and characters and not all of them make it to the final game. To that end, it was reported back in 2022 that Ted Lasso would be a playable character and, well, that hasn’t happened.

Warner Bros. did just buy the game’s developer, so it’s definitely serious about keeping the ball rolling on this whole branded platform fighter thing. WB has a ridiculously deep bench of IPs, including DC Comics, Harry Potter, HBO shows, Dune, Mad Max, Barbie, Looney Tunes and so many more. MultiVersus will never knock Super Smash Bros. from the throne, but it’s definitely proven itself to have a longer shelf life than, say, Sony’s PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/multiversus-leak-suggests-barbie-and-mad-max-tie-ins-are-on-the-way-162251960.html?src=rss

The Morning After: Netflix’s new gaming boss is a former Epic Games exec

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Netflix has hired Alain Tascan as its new president of games. Before joining Netflix, Tascan was executive vice president for Epic Games and oversaw first-party development for some of the company’s (and gaming’s) most successful titles, like Fortnite, Rocket League and Fall Guys.

Since launching its games project in 2021, Netflix has acquired notable indie studios Night School, Boss Fight, Next Games and Spry Fox and has brought many great indie games to mobile — seriously, search the app store, if only for Into The Breach. Netflix recently said it has 80-plus games currently in development. A multiplayer Squid Game project will be part of that, coinciding with the hit show’s next season, later this year.

— Mat Smith

Prime Video's much-needed overhaul

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Meta’s newest large language model (LLM), called Llama 3.1 405B, is the first openly available model to compete with rivals in general knowledge, math and translating. It was apparently trained on more than 16,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs, currently the fastest available chips, which cost roughly $25,000 each, and can beat rivals on over 150 benchmarks, Meta claimed.

Unlike OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic, which hold their AI models proprietary close, Meta’s AI models are open source, meaning anyone can modify and use them for free, without sharing personal data with Meta.

Continue reading.

Humble Games laid off all 36 of its staff. Former employees posted about the layoffs on social media. But a PR rep for Humble Games confirmed to Engadget the company would not be shutting its doors after the restructuring. He added the studio would continue to support and publish both ongoing and upcoming projects. Humble Games is owned by media conglomerate Ziff Davis, which counts IGN, Eurogamer and GamesIndustry.biz in its gaming portfolio.

Continue reading.

TMA
Lego

That should keep someone busy for an afternoon or ten.

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-netflixs-new-gaming-boss-is-a-former-epic-games-exec-111512978.html?src=rss

Netflix hires former Epic Games exec as new President of Games

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Netflix has landed a notable new leader for its rapidly-expanding gaming endeavors. Variety reported that the streaming company has hired Alain Tascan as its new president of games. Before joining Netflix, Tascan was executive vice president for game development at a little studio you may have heard of called Epic Games. In that role, he oversaw the first-party development for some of the company's hugely successful titles, such as Fortnite, Lego Fortnite, Rocket League and Fall Guys.

The company is also recruiting talent on the creative side. Since launching the games project in 2021, Netflix has acquired notable indie studios Night School, Boss Fight, Next Games and Spry Fox, and has brought a large number of acclaimed indie games to mobile. In its second quarter earnings call, Netflix execs revealed that it has more than 80 games currently in development, which would nearly double its current library of about 100 titles. 

Many of these new projects are interactive fiction based on Netflix shows and movies, with the goal of giving fans new ways to engage with their favorite titles. "I think our opportunity here to serve super fandom with games is really fun and remarkable," Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said during the call. We also learned that a multiplayer Squid Game project will be coming to Netflix Games later this year.

Although Netflix is making a sizable investment into this games division, people haven't been flocking to their titles yet. In 2022, the library had about 1.7 million daily users and its games had been downloaded 23.3 million times.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflix-hires-former-epic-games-exec-as-new-president-of-games-212614285.html?src=rss

The Cybertruck is coming to Fortnite and Rocket League because we’re being punished

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Video games are supposed to provide us an escape from the grinding and anger produced on an average day. Now one of the real world’s most contentious aggravations has slithered its way into Fortnite AND Rocket League. The Cybertruck, Tesla’s electric vehicle that replaced the pink Hummer as the official car for total jerks, makes its digital debut in both games today.

The Cybertruck add-ons are part of a new “Summer Road Trip'' promotion bundle for Fortnite and Rocket League. Both bundles come with a vehicle that looks like a door stop and special body decals such as “Baja Off-Road,” “CyberCamo,” “MatteBlack,” “Stainless Steel” and “OMG Cybertruck,” which recreates the window that Elon Musk broke while trying to prove the strength of the Cybertruck’s windows. Did they also include the sticky accelerator?

The new Cybertruck DLC for Fortnite and Rocket League come with six unique skins, all of which scream
Psyonix/Tesla

Presumably, the OMG stands for “Oh my God! (Can’t I go one day without seeing that ego on wheels we call the) Cybertruck?" The Baja Off-Road skin paired with the douchey Cybertruck in particular just screams, “I wear a lot of Ed Hardy!”

We have… some questions. Will the rain in Fortnite cause widespread rusting of the chassis? Will the Rocket League ball dent the “shatterproof” window like a metal ball famously did way back in 2019? Will players be able to finish a whole game if there’s another recall alert? If you really must, you can find out in both games now.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-cybertruck-is-coming-to-fortnite-and-rocket-league-because-were-being-punished-210309356.html?src=rss

Humble Games reportedly lays off its entire staff

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Humble Games has reportedly laid off all 36 of its staff. Former employees posted about the layoffs on social media. Humble Games is owned by media conglomerate Ziff Davis, which counts IGN, Eurogamer and GamesIndustry.biz among its gaming portfolio. Humble Games confirmed in a LinkedIn post that there had been a "restructure" at the company, but did not reveal the number of jobs lost.

A PR rep for Humble Games also confirmed to Engadget that the company would not be shutting its doors as a result of today's restructuring. He added that both ongoing and upcoming projects would continue to be supported and published by the studio.

The layoffs at Humble Bundle are the latest in a sweep across the gaming business. Last year saw a shocking number of cuts across studios of all sizes, and the trend has sadly continued into 2024.

"The games industry is volatile, it's been inundated by people who only want exponential growth at the expense of making great games with great teams," Emilee Kieffer, a former lead quality assurance analyst with Humble Games, wrote on LinkedIn following the layoffs.

The indie publisher helped bring almost 50 video games to market, including notable hits such as Slay the Spire, Unpacking, Wandersong and Coral Island. Humble Games also had several upcoming games slated for release, such as Never Alone 2, a second delve into mythology and stories from the indigenous Iñupiat people in Alaska. 

"This decision was not made lightly; it involved much deliberation and careful thought, with the goal of ensuring the stability and support of our developers and ongoing projects," Humble's statement said. 

This business is a separate operation from the charity storefront Humble Bundle, which is also part of Ziff Davis but does not appear to be impacted by today's news. We've reached out to Ziff Davis and Humble Games for more information and will update if we hear back.

Update, July 23, 2024, 5:35 ET: Article has been updated to include a response from Humble Games' PR team.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/humble-games-reportedly-lays-off-its-entire-staff-201923446.html?src=rss

Adobe’s Photoshop can now generate AI images via prompts like Dall-E or Midjourney

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Adobe has widely released a new and potentially contentious feature: text-to-image generation for Photoshop powered by Firefly, first teased in April. As with LLMs like Dall-E and Midjourney, you can use it to create an image from scratch by typing a description into Photoshop's updated generative AI tool. 

I tried it with the text "Dramatic low angle view of a steamship from the 1800s in a storm with large waves and lightning" in multiple styles (anime, watercolor, sketch, realistic) and got decent results. The usual AI art caveats apply though, particularly with weird details if you look closely. But it certainly created useable results and you have the benefit of already being inside Photoshop to fix any errors. 

Adobe's Photoshop can now generate images via prompts like Dall-E or Mid Journey
Adobe Firefly AI-generated image

Previously, Photoshop's Generative Fill feature only let you add, extend or remove specific parts of an image. Now, you can create images from scratch, then tweak them later. "This really speeds up time to creation," Adobe's Erin Boyce told Engadget in April. "The idea of getting something from your mind to the canvas has never been easier." 

The feature is powered by Firefly Image 3 model, something at the heart of a recent artist backlash against Adobe. Creators were incensed by language in Adobe's recent ToS (terms of service), interpreting it to mean that Adobe could freely use their work to train the company's generative AI models. 

In its latest post, however, Adobe stated that it has a "commitment to creator friendly AI" which means "never training on customer content." It promised to take a creator-friendly approach as part of its AI ethics principles of accountability, responsibility and transparency.

Adobe's Photoshop can now generate images via prompts like Dall-E or Mid Journey
Adobe

Along with image generation, Adobe introduced an "Enhance Detail" feature in Photoshop's Generative Fill. For Illustrator, it introduced Generative Shape Fill to add detailed vectors in a designer's unique style (above), Enhanced Text to Pattern (creating customized vector patterns in the artists style) and Style Reference. It also added a Mockup tool to create "high-quality visual prototypes of art on objects like product packaging," enhanced selection capabilities and more.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/adobes-photoshop-can-now-generate-ai-images-via-prompts-like-dall-e-or-mid-journey-130018181.html?src=rss

Echoes of the Emergent, a hauntingly beautiful Playdate exclusive, sold me on visual novels

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Somehow in all these years, I’ve never gotten into visual novels, despite being a person who loves both reading and video games. The idea has always intrigued me in some way, but I’ve never really felt compelled to actually pick one up. That changed when I first saw the announcement for Echoes of the Emergent a few months ago. Described as “a personal journey through a shattered post-apocalyptic world,” all it took was a glimpse of Echoes of the Emergent’s gritty aesthetic and melancholic atmosphere to get me to preorder it. And now that I’ve finally gotten around to playing (reading? experiencing?) it, I’m kind of blown away.

Echoes of the Emergent is a Playdate-exclusive title from RNG Party Games, the same team that made Bloom. It opens with its main character, Ayumi, on a tense scavenging trip to find any food she can in a ruined city. She’s alone, afraid and increasingly concerned about her dwindling resources. As the story progresses, it bounces between Ayumi’s bleak new reality and flashbacks to a time when things were normal. Her panicked efforts to stay alive, to keep going, are interwoven with memories of her family and friends — some of them happy, some painful. And there’s a cat.

A still from Echoes of the Emergent showing a girl (viewed from behind) looking out at dilapidated buildings. The text reads: It was all gone
RNG Party Games

The narrative is illustrated with haunting backgrounds of Ayumi’s dilapidated surroundings, and these move ever so slightly to create a really unsettling effect. If you press the down arrow on the D-pad, you can collapse the text box to get a full view of the backgrounds. It takes a few hours to get through the entire story, but it’s definitely worth carving out some time for. You can save your place by pressing ‘B’ to pull up the menu.

Echoes of the Emergent is the kind of experience that will stick with you for a little while even after it’s over. It’s available on the Playdate Catalog for $8, but you can also get it — and its captivating soundtrack — on itch.io.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/echoes-of-the-emergent-a-hauntingly-beautiful-playdate-exclusive-sold-me-on-visual-novels-222033336.html?src=rss