It didn't take long for Netflix to greenlight more Arcane. Deadlinereports Netflix has renewed the League of Legends-based series for a second season now in production. Core stars Ella Purnell (Jinx), Hailee Steinfeld (Vi) and Katie Leung (Caitlyn) are already set to reprise their roles.
There's no mystery behind the decision: the show is a success. Co-creators Christian Linke and Alex Yee said they were "beyond happy" with the reaction. The numbers also back them up — the first season of Arcane racked up nearly 34.2 million viewing hours in its first week on Netflix's new top 10 chart, making it the second-most popular TV series in any language behind Narcos: Mexico (almost 50.3 million).
The popularity isn't a shock. Both Netflix and League creator Riot Games heavily promoted the show, to the point where LoL included multiple crossovers. You knew Arcane was available if you were even vaguely interested in the game that inspired it. And yes, it helps that Arcane happens to be well-received by many accounts.
The renewal doesn't necessarily hint at a new wave of game-inspired Netflix shows. It does, however, suggest that relatively high-budget game productions have a healthy future at the streaming pioneer. Don't be surprised if Netflix takes more chances on projects like this.
Ready yourselves, friends. Season 2 of Arcane is now in production.
Rockstar Games has apologized for the shoddy quality of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition. It plans to fix "the unexpected technical issues" and improve the three games in the collection.
"We want to sincerely apologize to everyone who has encountered issues playing these games," the publisher said. "The updated versions of these classic games did not launch in a state that meets our own standards of quality, or the standards our fans have come to expect." The first update is scheduled to arrive in the coming days and it will "address a number of issues."
It didn't take long for players to start sharing clips of bugs and glitches on social media after the remastered collection of GTA III, GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas arrived last week. Digital Foundry took a deep dive into GTA III and found there were "issues that are so blatant and jarring and ridiculous, it's hard to understand how the game made its way through quality control."
What's more, Rockstar pulled the PC version of the bundle soon after launch to "remove some data files that were unintentionally included in the new versions of these games" (those are believed to include files related to the infamous San Andreas "Hot Coffee" mod). The collection was available to buy again a few days later. Rockstar Launcher services were unavailable for over a day too, making the collection and the PC versions of Grand Theft Auto Online and Red Dead Online unplayable during that time.
Soon after Rockstar announced the release date for the trilogy in October, it removed the original versions the games from digital storefronts. Now, the classic versions of GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas are returning to PC as a bundle on the Rockstar Store. Players who buy the remastered trilogy on PC by June 30th will receive the originals at no extra cost.
Meanwhile, Rockstar has asked everyone to refrain from attacking developers on social media. "We would kindly ask our community to please maintain a respectful and civil discourse around this release as we work through these issues," it said. Grove Street Games, which is behind ports of several other Rockstar titles, worked on these remasters.
This week, Cherlynn and Devindra are joined by Engadget’s Jessica Conditt to dive into the latest controversy around Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, he was well aware of sexual misconduct allegations at the company, and he deliberately kept Activision's board in the dark. Also, we chat about what Apple’s self service program means for you, as well as a new accessibility gadget that brings eye tracking to the iPad.
Listen below, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!
Credits Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar Guest: Jessica Conditt Producer: Ben Ellman Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos,Luke Brooks Graphics artists: Luke Brooks, Kyle Maack Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien
The cult classic '90s game Earthworm Jim is coming back to TV as a new series, according to Variety and a tweet from Interplay Entertainment. Interplay holds the rights to Earthworm Jim games and recently announced it was bringing the franchise back as an Intellivision Amico exclusive.
The project will be headed be Interplay's newly formed TV and film studio division, working with the animation studio Passion Pictures. "There’s so much potential in this story universe: a galaxy full of animals battling for power," project lead Michel K. Parandi told Variety. "Jim is an earthworm in a universe where Earth is nothing more than a myth. His struggle to find meaning is surreal and comical, but it’s also relatable."
The first Earthworm Jim game came out on Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo in 1994, with the last released in 1999. There's still no word on when the new game will arrive. There was also a Warner Bros. cartoon series based on the game that ran for two season in 1995, with the lead character played by none other than Dan Castellaneta, best known as the voice of Homer Simpson.
In a follow-up tweet, Interplay said that the original creator of the game, presumably Doug TenNapel, "is not involved at all." TenNapel was originally brought in as a creative consultant on the game, but his participation was called into question after he made a number of racist and homophobic comments on a podcast.
Since 2017, Instagram has allowed users to combine up to 10 photos and videos in a single post, but only now, some four years later, is the company adding a way to delete a single image or clip from a carousel. Instagram head Adam Mosseri detailed how the new feature works in one of his recent weekly video updates.
You can delete a photo or video from a carousel by first tapping the three dots icon, then the edit button. At that point, swipe over to the image or clip you want to remove and then tap the delete icon. According to Mosseri, the feature is currently only available on iOS, though it’s coming to Android soon. He was also quick to admit it was something Instagram should have added a while ago.
If you live in the US, you also have access to another new feature. This one is called “Rage Shake,” and it’s exactly what it sounds like. If you’re using Instagram and something isn’t working properly, shake your phone. Doing so will cause the app’s bug report interface to appear. You can then tell the company what happened. Mosseri says it will help Instagram prioritize the specific bugs it needs to address. Rage Shake is currently only available in the US.
Both features won’t change how you use Instagram, but they should be welcome additions all the same. Now if only the company would release a dedicated iPad app.
Last week, Twitter’s “premium” subscription service made its debut in the United States. Twitter Blue is a $3 monthly subscription that buys subscribers access to additional features, like an undo button and ad-free news articles.
For now, Twitter Blue comes with a fairly limited set of extra features designed for the people who spend the most time on the service. According to Twitter’s Sara Beukpour, this group includes “verified longtime Twitter users” as well as “news lovers” and other “super tweeters.” In other words: the 25 percent of Twitter’s user base who send 97 percent of all tweets.
“I actually bet many of them are you,” Beykpour said during a briefing with a group of tech reporters last week. Of course I signed up immediately.
And after a little more than a week with Twitter Blue, I’m not sure it’s worth $3 a month for most people. The features are mostly useful, but it’s frustrating that not everything works the same way across Twitter’s app and website. But there are undoubtedly useful features, and I am intrigued by what might come next for “premium Twitter.” For now, though, here’s a look at what $3 buys you.
‘Undo’ tweets
Of all the features in Twitter Blue, the “undo” button has gotten the most hype. Twitter will likely never give us an actual edit button, so this is probably the closest we’ll ever get. And if you’re prone to typos or tweeting-and-then-instantly-regretting, this feature alone might be worth the subscription. I say might because the “undo” can also be incredibly confusing, and doesn’t always work as you expect.
It’s supposed to work pretty much like Gmail’s “undo send” feature. After you hit “send,” you’ll have a few seconds when you can see the tweet you just wrote, but it hasn’t actually been published. If you change your mind for whatever reason, you can hit “undo,” which takes you back to the tweet in the compose screen. Twitter gives you the ability to set how long this window is — it can range from 5 seconds to a full 60 seconds — and you can always opt to send it before the window runs out with an extra click.
Screenshot / Twitter
But undoing a tweet doesn’t always work the same way across Twitter’s app and website. On Twitter’s app, you can use the “undo” feature for almost any type of tweet: original tweets (tweets sent from the main compose window), replies, threads, quote tweets and polls. Essentially, you can “undo” almost anything you tweet, anywhere in the app. But that’s not the case on twitter.com, where the undo function only works with original tweets and replies, but not with quote tweets or threads. Unless you exclusively tweet from your phone, this means you have to remember which tweets are editable undoable and which aren't. A typo-ridden tweet can be undone, but an ill-advised quote tweet cannot.
There’s also the fact that it can take several steps to actually undo a tweet. In Twitter’s app, the default setting is that the first thing you see after you mash the tweet button is your tweet and an “undo” button. This gives you plenty of time to give it another read, even if you have a relatively short undo “window.” But on Twitter’s website, you can only undo by looking for a “view tweet” dialog at the bottom of the page and then navigating to the page with your tweet and the undo button.
Sometimes, "view tweet" doesn't appear at all, and the only way to access the "undo" is to navigate to your profile and look for the pending tweet on your timeline. Not only is this a confusing extra step, but it also makes it harder to take advantage of the undo button at all. Is it still useful to have? I guess, but the unpredictability of it kind of gave me more anxiety than just not having it at all.
Reader mode and bookmark folders
The reader mode is probably the most underrated feature of Twitter Blue, and the one I’d argue would be most useful for all the site’s users, not just those willing to pay. It converts long threads into a much more readable stream of text, much like a browser’s reader view would. I hate those intrusive (and ethically dubious) third-party thread apps that “unroll” tweets into separate websites, but there’s a reason why those services are so popular: lengthy threads are difficult to read. Twitter’s service was never designed for essay-length tweet storms, and long threads are often cut off. Reader mode is a simple solution that is so effective I can’t believe it took them this long to make.
Screenshot / Twitter
It’s even better when paired with another new feature: bookmark folders. Now, when I come across an impossibly long tweetstorm I want to come back to later, I simply add it to my “to read” folder and keep scrolling. Except, again, bookmark folders are for now only supported in Twitter’s app. Head over to twitter.com and all your bookmarks are still a mess.
Ad-free news and ‘top articles’
My favorite Twitter Blue feature — and a large part of the reason why I will likely continue handing over $3 each month for it — is the “top articles” feature. The feature shows you a list of all the most-shared news articles by people in your Twitter network over the last 24 hours. If that sounds at all familiar, it’s because the feature is Twitter’s nod to Nuzzel, a once independent news app that also created feeds of articles based on what was being shared by people you follow on Twitter. But the original app was shut down when Twitter acquired Scroll, the news startup that had previously bought Nuzzel.
And while “Top Articles'' doesn't have all the functionality Nuzzel once did, it’s enough to scratch the itch for former fans of the app (a group that seems to be almost entirely made up of journalists as far as I can tell). But even if you never used Nuzzel, Top Articles is useful. It gives you a quick digest of what the people you follow are reading and tweeting about. Or, you know, you can just use it to figure out who is the main character of the day.
Screenshot / Twitter
Twitter’s acquisition of Scroll also powers another significant part of Twitter Blue: ad-free news articles. Scroll (and now Twitter) formed partnerships with hundreds of news outlets in order to offer ad-free browsing in exchange for a portion of users’ subscription fees. Now, Twitter lets subscribers view how much their own browsing has directed to those publishers. It’s an intriguing concept, and one that won Scroll a lot of praise before it was bought by Twitter.
It’s also the aspect of Twitter Blue I’m most curious to watch. As it stands now, it can feel a little disjointed. While stripping out ads is nice, it doesn’t include access to paywalled content, so it can be jarring to see an “ad-free with Twitter Blue” banner only to hit a paywall. However, Twitter has hinted that it may one day pursue more ways to access paywalled content — and a message in the app says paywall access isn’t included “right now” — so there’s good reason to hope that may one day change.
Early access to new features and customization
Twitter has gotten much more public with the features it experiments with in recent years. The company at one point had a separate beta version of the app it used to try out new tweaks. That app is no longer available, but the “labs” feature of Twitter Blue feels in some ways like its successor. The company plans to make some experimental features available to Twitter Blue subscribers first, before deciding whether they should become full-fledged features available to more people.
For now, there are only two features that fall into this bucket: the ability to pin specific chats to the top of your DM inbox, and the ability to upload videos of up to 10 minutes (these longer videos are not entirely new, but accounts had to be approved by Twitter in order to have access to the feature). I appreciate having the option to do both, though I haven’t used either feature and I suspect most others won’t either.
Screenshot / Twitter
Finally, Twitter Blue also gives you the ability to make small tweaks to the look and feel of the Twitter app. For example, you can change the app icon or set a new color theme (the “theme” only changes small elements like the color of the tweet composer and the dot that appears when you have a new notification). You can also opt to rearrange the shortcuts in the bottom of the app’s navigation bar, which is kind of cool (especially if you want to, say, banish the Spaces Tab). But, again, these are small details that I can’t imagine most people bothering to change.
Is it worth it?
Whether or not you think all that is worth three bucks a month largely depends on how much you use Twitter (and how willing you are to pay for apps). While I don’t think it makes sense for most people, I think it’s pretty compelling for anyone who depends on Twitter for their job or otherwise falls into that extra-dedicated “super tweeter” category.
And while Twitter hasn’t offered any details around how many subscribers have signed up, the app has made about $180,000 since it first started offering Twitter Blue this summer, according to data provided by analytics firm Sensor Tower. That’s not much money for Twitter, but it does suggest there is a not-totally-insignificant number of people willing to try it out (and the service is still only available in four countries).
At a broader level, Twitter Blue raises important questions about how the company will prioritize new features. While the company has maintained that there will always be a free version of Twitter, it’s not difficult to imagine that the most exciting and useful updates could end up being locked behind a subscription. Twitter spent much of the last decade not really creating any meaningful new features at all, so it still stings a little to see the company add the kinds of features longtime users have long hoped for, only to restrict them to those willing to pay.
After testing the feature in the US and elsewhere, Spotify has launched synchronized song lyrics for users around the world, the company announced. The new feature is coming to the "majority" of Spotify tracks for both free and premium users, and will be powered in-app by Musixmatch .
The feature will work across iOS and Android devices, desktop, TV and consoles. To use it, you tap on the "Now Playing View" on a song and swipe up from the bottom of the screen. From there, you'll see track lyrics that scroll in real time, along with a share button for social media. Spotify didn't say how many songs had the feature available, but "majority" implies more than half, at least.
Spotify has previously dabbled with lyrics, showing the stories behind them with help from Genius, but the feature was limited to a handful of songs. It also teamed up with Musixmatch previously to show lyrics, but that experiment closed down in 2016. Spotify started testing the new feature early this year, but it has actually been active in 26 markets since mid-2020, including Brazil, Mexico, Hong Kong and India.
In any case, the update puts Spotify on the level of Apple Music, which debuted its own song lyrics back in 2019, while Deezer also offers a similar feature. However, Spotify has more paid subscribers than both those services put together, meaning more people will be able to sing along to their favorite songs using the correct lyrics.
The following only contains slight spoilers for the first episode of season four of 'Star Trek: Discovery.'
Since its debut back in 2017 (and even before then, really), Star Trek: Discovery has been a divisive show. There was a long laundry list of complaints: the series is too dark, everyone is mean, everyone cries too much, the Klingon designs suck, it shouldn’t be set before the original series, Michael Burnham is an unlikeable main character. While some changes have been made to the show over the years to smooth these rough edges, the elevation of Michael Burnham to the captain’s chair for season four has made it clear that Discovery is still largely going to do its own thing, regardless of what the fandom thinks.
In the past, season four for Star Trek series has always been a turning point, the moment when a show finally figures out what it wants to be. Season four of The Next Generation started with the riveting “The Best of Both Worlds,” and produced a number of classic episodes like “Family,” “Clues” and “The Drumhead.” Deep Space Nine added Worf to its crew in its fourth year, while Voyager got Seven of Nine. Enterprise’s final season is generally considered its best. So fans were curious to see if the pattern would continue in the Kurtzman era of Trek.
Things certainly looked promising at the end of last season. The crew of Discovery had jumped 900 years into the future, to a galaxy where dilithium fuel for space travel was in short supply and the Federation was in tatters thanks to an event known as “The Burn.” Burnham and the rest of the Discovery crew figured out the source of the disaster and solved the problem in last year’s finale, opening the doors to a show dedicated to rebuilding the Federation and its ideals. After three seasons of war, it finally looked like the USS Discovery could finally get down to Starfleet’s long-stated mandates of science and exploration.
Season four begins five months after the previous episode, with the Federation now in high gear reaching out to old members and allies. That’s where we join the USS Discovery, as Burnham and Cleveland Booker are attempting to give a shipment of dilithium to a species new to the Star Trek audience. The mission quickly goes awry, strongly reminiscent of the madcap opening of Star Trek Into Darkness.
CBS
The parallels to the weakest of the three Abrams-era films are not entirely an accident or even a homage: both Into Darkness and this week’s season premiere were co-penned by Star Trek head Alex Kurtzman. They exhibit some of the excesses of modern Trek like an emphasis on frantic action and quippy dialogue — at least there’s less lens flare this time around. And everyone seems to be in a good mood, a contrast to when everyone was just worn down in the 23rd century by years of war and secret experiments.
The season opener is largely dedicated to showing off a new optimistic status quo, with Starfleet Academy being reestablished, Booker traveling to attend his nephew’s coming-of-age ritual and a new Federation president getting sworn in. It all seems rather staid, but Star Trek has always had its share of pomp and circumstance so it was actually a nice change of pace for the program. But things do go awry when the Discovery is tasked with rescuing a station crew and have to make a few hard choices, thus the title of the episode: “Kobayashi Maru.”
CBS
For those unfamiliar with Star Trek lore, the Kobayashi Maru is a test that all command-track cadets must take at Starfleet Academy. In the simulation, the cadets are faced with the choice of rescuing a ship stranded in enemy territory. To cross the border to rescue the craft is to risk war, but to preserve peace means to consign that crew to death. It’s been called a “no win” scenario,” and the Academy is interested in how a cadet reacts to it rather than the actual outcome. Kirk is known as the only person to have actually beaten it, because he reprogrammed the scenario; he cheated.
Like Kirk, Michael Burnham also doesn’t believe in the no-win scenario. She always does what she feels is best, and it’s made her crew unfailingly loyal to her over the past few seasons. But it’s earned her a share of detractors off-screen, because Burnham often disobeys orders and ignores good advice. She’s the rebel cop who plays by their own rules. Except this is Star Trek, a franchise about teamwork. Michael’s actions — and the fact that they always succeed — often undermine her superiors and even her own crewmates.
CBS
Placing her in the captain’s chair should have alleviated some of this issue, since Burnham is now the one her crew has to listen to. But even then the show felt it needed some sort of conflict, bringing the Federation president along to question Michael’s judgment in front of her crew. I couldn’t help but be reminded of how before the show aired, the producers and writers were bragging about how they were going to break one of Gene Roddenberry’s key rules for the series: No inter-crew conflict. Watching that in action in this episode, however, was mildly uncomfortable and even a little embarrassing to see.
Not everything is rosy by the end of the adventure, but it’s still a better outcome than we’ve seen at the end of many Star Trek outings. But the new “happy” status quo is thrown out the door by an anomaly at the end of the episode. As seen in previews, this anomaly will be an ongoing concern for the USS Discovery and the entire Federation — not just as a threat to life, but as a threat to the Federation’s efforts to pull itself back together.
CBS
Unfortunately, this also means that Discovery won’t be doing a lot of discovering in its fourth season. Fans who love “planet of the week” adventures and were hoping for the show to embrace that format will come away disappointed for now. However, while episodes one and two are involved in setup for the ongoing anomaly plot line, episodes three and four still make room for some vaguely one-shot adventures, albeit ones designed to further character development.
But while Discovery doesn’t seem all that interested in changing how it does things, the environment around it has changed. It’s no longer the only Star Trek show on TV, thanks to the premieres of Picard and Lower Decks in 2020, last month’s kid-oriented Prodigy and the debut of Strange New Worlds next year. All of these shows tackle the Star Trek universe in their own way, and are not required viewing to understand what’s happening in other shows (though there are some references to Picard in the first episodes of Discovery). Viewers can choose the Trek that suits them best, removing the pressure from Discovery to be all things to all fans and making it even easier to just do its own thing.
Spotify's growing podcast ambitions now include a pact with a big studio before it truly gets started. The streaming music service has struck a multi-year deal that gives it "first look" access to podcasts from J.J. Abrams' new Bad Robot Audio unit. The move lets Spotify snap up exclusives from Bad Robot's planned mix of fiction and non-fiction shows.
Bad Robot Audio hasn't yet detailed its releases, but it will have an experienced leader. Christina Choi will helm the new outfit after directing content partnerships at Audible, and before that a creative development executive at Spotify. She played an important role in Spotify's early podcast efforts, and is unsurprisingly eager to collaborate with her former employer in her field of expertise.
The move could be a coup for Spotify if Bad Robot's podcast group fares as well as its better-known video team. Spotify has numerous major exclusives from narrowly-focused partners like WWE, the Obamas and Dax Shepard, but alliances with general studios on this level are decidedly less common. This arrangement might produce top shows in a wider variety of genres, and could include some well-known voices in the bargain.
For Bad Robot, this is part of a broader expansion into the digital realm. J.J. Abrams' company has been shifting toward streaming shows, and last year branched out to gaming with Bad Robot Games. There's a clear effort to create a media empire that reaches well beyond conventional video, and podcasts represent a significant next step.
The 2021 Game Awards nominees have been revealed, and it's safe to say there are a few clear frontrunners alongside the usual eclectic mix. Arkane's time-warping Deathloop and Sony's multi-dimensional Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart were two of the most frequently nominated titles, picking up five nods each that included Game of the Year, art, sound and acting categories.
This was also a good year for games with accessibility and, in some cases, an important message. The empathy-driven Life is Strange: True Colors made both the "Games for Impact" and "Innovation in Accessibility" nominees, while blockbusters like Forza, Ratchet & Clank and Far Cry 6 are also in the running for the accessibility award. Creative games like the blink-based Before Your Eyes and the introspective No Longer Home are candidates for the Games for Impact award. Simply speaking, you don't need to look very far to find innovative titles in 2021.
The awards ceremony takes place December 9th. There are bound to be some upsets and "really?" picks (even the buggy Cyberpunk 2077 is up for some awards), but the picks so far appear to reflect the gaming zeitgeist in a year where originals and sequels vied for your attention.
