It's been a long, bumpy journey for Double Fine in its efforts to make a sequel to its very first game, but Psychonauts 2 is almost here. Just ahead of the release, the developer and Xbox Game Studios shone the spotlight on the hotly anticipated game during the Gamescom 2021 Xbox Stream.
The story picks up right where the VR game Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin left off. The launch trailer shows more of the colorful, action-packed platforming fans have come to expect from the series. You play as Raz, a Psychonaut who can explore other characters' minds and use psychic powers like telekinesis and levitation. Raz, who grew up in the circus, also has several acrobatic moves at his disposal as he takes on enemies based on emotions.
The original Psychonauts was released in 2005. After several aborted attempts to make a sequel, Double Fine ran a successful crowdfunding campaign in 2015 to covering some of the development costs. Xbox Game Studios bought Double Fine in 2019, and help the developer finish Psychonauts 2 as intended.
Psychonauts 2 will finally hit PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S (with optimizations for the latter consoles) on August 25th. Naturally, it's included with Xbox Game Pass for PC and console. On top of that, Microsoft is once again in the unusual position of publishing a game on PlayStation 4.
Microsoft is moving into the next phase of its plan to bring Xbox Cloud Gaming to as many devices as possible, and it's one of the most important steps yet. Starting this holiday season, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will have access to cloud gaming on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One consoles.
The company, which made the announcement during its Gamescom showcase, said you'll be able to fire up more than 100 games without having to download them first. At some point in the future, Xbox One owners can play some Series X/S games through the cloud, such as Microsoft Flight Simulator. You'll know a title is cloud gaming-compatible if you see a cloud icon next to it in the Game Pass library. Microsoft is targeting 1080p gameplay at 60 frames per second.
Walmart has announced a delivery service for local businesses, which should be up and running by the end of the year. It plans to use drones and self-driving cars as part of the Walmart GoLocal infrastructure. Earlier this year, Walmart invested in Cruise after previously running a delivery pilot with GM's autonomous vehicle startup.
Local retailers might be able to keep using their current commerce platform and hook it into GoLocal. It's a white-label service, so deliveries won't be made by Walmart-branded vehicles. Associates, members of the Spark Driver program and other delivery companies will handle orders, according to CNBC.
Walmart says it will be able to offer delivery within two hours in certain markets. There's a two-day delivery option as well. The company claims shipping will be priced competitively and that it can handle everything from groceries to kiddie pools and oversize items.
GoLocal is a key part of Walmart's strategy and it should help the company to diversify revenue streams. There might be some advantages for small businesses as well. It could slightly level the playing field with the likes of Amazon, which is largely moving its delivery network in-house and promising same-day or next-day delivery in many cases.
Riot Games is changing its plans for the 2021 League of Legends World Championship (aka Worlds). The event was supposed to take place in China for the second straight year, but it's moving to Europe amid travel complications brought on by the rapid spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant.
"We've reached the point where it's extremely difficult to guarantee that qualifying teams and their best players would be able to attend Worlds this year," John Needham, Riot's global head of esports, said in a video. "After considering all possible options, we concluded that moving Worlds to Europe provided the best opportunity for the most teams and their best players to compete."
Worlds 2021 was supposed to take place in five cities across China, culminating in Shenzhen in November, after initially being announced for the US in 2018. Riot hasn't revealed exactly where in Europe it will bring one of the biggest events in esports this year, though Needham noted that accessibility for the highest number of teams and their key players will be the most critical factor. Riot will reveal more details about Worlds 2021 in the coming days and weeks.
Earlier this month, Riot moved the final matches of the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) — the esport's North American league — from a New Jersey arena to its LCS Arena in Los Angeles. It said the rise in Delta variant cases meant that it "cannot in good conscience conduct a massive fan event at this time."
Other esports are still pressing forward with in-person events in North America. The 2021 Call of Duty League season just wrapped up, with its championship weekend being held at a packed Galen Center in Los Angeles. The Overwatch League playoffs and grand finals are set to take place in Dallas and the same LA arena respectively next month, marking the esport's return to in-person events in the US.
Just ahead of Gamescom's official opening, Microsoft is hosting its latest showcase on Tuesday. You can expect around 90 minutes of news and updates during the event, which starts at 1PM ET.
Microsoft is promising more info about Xbox Game Pass and some of the biggest upcoming Xbox titles, including details about some previously announced games from internal studios and third-party developers. Much of the focus will be on the company's holiday slate, so there's a good chance Xbox will finally reveal the release date for Halo Infinite (even if the game will lack a couple of core game modes at the outset). The event will also include another look at gameplay from Techland's Dying Light 2 Stay Human.
You can watch the Gamescom 2021 Xbox Stream on official Xbox channels on Twitch, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, or simply watch it via the below embed. Microsoft is broadcasting the event on other platforms elsewhere, including Bilibili in China and VK in Russia. There'll be American Sign Language, German Sign Language and English audio description versions of the stream too. The company is subtitling the event in 30 languages, but not all of those will be available during the live broadcast.
It's worth noting that Xbox will stream the event in 1080p at 60 frames per second. A 4K version will be available on its YouTube channel afterward.
Movies Anywhere, the streaming hub that pulls together films you purchase for a variety of digital stores, has added a feature many users have long been hoping for: lists. Not only will this help you better organize your library, the system will automatically generate personalized lists based on the movies you own. You should now see a My Lists tab next to My Movies.
Organizing a Movies Anywhere library presents a different challenge to grouping titles together on the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. While subscribers of those services have access to the same content based on the country they're in, every Movies Anywhere user has a unique selection of films in their locker.
Movies Anywhere is looking to avoid having the same movie in too many lists. As such, movies are typically funneled into categories to which they're most closely matched.
One key part of the My Lists feature is that it takes into account viewing behavior. During a demo last week, Movies Anywhere didn’t go into too much detail about how this works. However, if you watch a few minutes of any film, the algorithm, artificial intelligence and machine learning systems will consider what you're interested in watching when they organize your lists.
Movies Anywhere’s content team classifies the films and there are around 2,000 different potential categories as things stand. These are centered around things like genres, franchises, people (say, actors, directors or composers) and themes. So, if you have a lot of movies about robots or cyborgs in your library, they might be grouped together in a list. Same thing goes for a collection of Marvel Cinematic Universe films. Other lists might focus on movies focused on antiheroes or musicians. The system might generate a list of nostalgic flicks, or classify films into subgenres.
Lists that Movies Anywhere creates for you are marked as "automatic lists." You can also create and modify lists. You'll be able to add and remove films, reorganize lists and rename them. If you own all the Star Wars movies, for instance, you can place them in release order, sort them in the canonical timeline or even arrange them in the so-called Machete order. It’s up to you.
One thing you can't do right now is modify any lists on the Movies Anywhere smart TV app. You can only browse your lists there. But because your lists sync across devices, you can make changes on a phone, tablet or computer, and you'll see those reflected on your smart TV.
This is a useful update, especially for Movies Anywhere users who pick up a ton of movies during sales or those who redeem tons of digital codes from Blu-ray purchases. The service says that My Lists is "a direct response to specific requests" from users. It should bring some more order to users' libraries, which can get unwieldy as they grow in size.
Esports is most commonly associated with high-octane competitive games such as League of Legends, Rocket League and Call of Duty: Warzone. A chill farming sim might not immediately spring to mind, but very soon, some of the world's finest Stardew Valley players will face off for thousands of dollars.
Creator Eric Barone (aka ConcernedApe) said the first official Stardew Valley Cup event will take place at noon ET on September 4th. “It’s a competition of skill, knowledge and teamwork, with a prize pool of over $40k,” Barone wrote on Twitter.
In collaboration with @UnsurpassableZ, I'm pleased to announce the 1st official Stardew Valley Cup! It's a competition of skill, knowledge, and teamwork, with a prize pool of over $40k. See some of Stardew's most dedicated players in their element! Main event is Sept. 4th 9am PST pic.twitter.com/qtDW5e5LvD
Barone and Stardew Valley streamer Zach “UnsurpassableZ” Hartman have concocted more than 100 challenges for competitors to tackle, as Kotakunotes. Four teams of four players will each have three hours to complete as many of the tasks as they can. The challenges include things like giving someone a gift they love at the Feast of the Winter Star (worth 25 points), winning the ice fishing contest (15 points) and completing item bundles in the Community Center (10 points each).
Players will have to prioritize the tasks, since some might not be entirely worth the points at stake. For instance, unless players are able to craft a ton of staircases, it can take an hour or so to reach the bottom of the mines, which is worth 10 points. Hartman will also add five surprise challenges during the event, each of which are worth 50 points, so competitors might have to adjust their plans on the fly.
Barone and Hartman will be commentators for the event, which you can watch on Hartman's Twitch channel.
It's actually not the first competitive Stardew Valley event with cash at stake. A few Stardew Twitch Rivals competitions have taken place. One event in 2019 had $35,000 on the line, and included challenges like catching all five legendary fish as quickly as possible and obtaining the most gold.
Around 38 million records from north of a thousand web apps that use Microsoft's Power Apps platform were left exposed online, according to researchers. The records are said to have included data from COVID-19 contact tracing efforts, vaccine registrations and employee databases, such as home addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers and vaccination status.
Data from some large companies and institutions was exposed in the incident, according to Wired, including American Airlines, Ford, the Indiana Department of Health and New York City public schools. The vulnerability has mostly been resolved.
Researchers from security company Upguard started looking into the issue in May. They found data from many Power Apps that was supposed to be private was available for anyone to access if they knew where to look.
The Power Apps service aims to make it easy for customers to make their own web and mobile apps. It offers application programming interfaces (APIs) for developers to use with the data they collect. However, Upguard found that using those APIs makes the data obtained through Power Apps public by default, and manual reconfiguration was required to keep the information private.
Upguard says it sent a vulnerability report to the Microsoft Security Resource Center on June 24th, including links to Power Apps accounts on which sensitive data was exposed and steps to identify APIs that enabled anonymous access to data. Researchers worked with Microsoft to clarify how to reproduce the issue. However, an Microsoft analyst told the firm on June 29th that the case was closed and they “determined that this behavior is considered to be by design.”
Upguard then started notifying some of the affected companies and organizations, which moved to lock down their data. It raised an abuse report with Microsoft on July 15th. By July 19th, the company says that most of the data from the Power Apps in question, including the most sensitive information, had been made private. Engadget has contacted Microsoft for comment.
Earlier this month, Microsoft said Power Apps will keep data private by default when developers harness the APIs. In addition, it released a tool for developers to check their Power Apps settings.
There's no indication as yet that any of the exposed data has been compromised. Among the most sensitive information that was left in the open were 332,000 email addresses and Microsoft employee IDs that are used for payroll, according to Upguard. The company also says that more than 39,000 records from portals related to Microsoft Mixed Reality were exposed, including users' names and email addresses.
The incident underscores the fact that a misconfiguration, no matter how seemingly minor, could lead to serious data breaches. That doesn't appear to be the case here, thankfully. Still, it goes to show that developers should probably triple check their settings, especially when plugging in an API they haven't designed themselves.
Netflix's live-action adaptation of classic anime Cowboy Bebophas been a long time coming, and the show finally has a release date. The 10-episode first season will start streaming on November 19th.
Although Netflix hasn't posted a trailer just yet, it provided a first proper look at Cowboy Bebop in a bunch of photos. The images show John Cho (Spike Spiegel), Mustafa Shakir (Jet Black) and Daniella Pineda (Faye Valentine) in character, as well as an adorable corgi.
See You Space Cowboy.
Meet Spike Spiegel (John Cho), Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), and Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda) in Cowboy Bebop. Premiering November 19 pic.twitter.com/7vRtZvYjYM
Live-action adaptations of anime haven't typically been well-received (here's looking at you, Ghost in the Shell). There's pressure on Netflix to get this take on Cowboy Bebop right, but things are looking promising. The core cast looks great in the first batch of images, while some key creatives from the 1998 anime are involved. Legendary composer Yoko Kanno returns, while original director Shinichirō Watanabe consulted on the Netflix show.
Square Enix might have just found its next big franchise in Outriders. The third-person shooter has become a hit for the publisher (though that hasn't been reflected in royalties for the developer, People Can Fly.) It's easy to see why: the core gameplay is bags of fun, especially when you’re playing with friends.
However, it doesn't quite stick the landing. A by-the-numbers story and limited replayability drag things down a bit. As such, before you pay full price, it might be worth checking out Outriders on Xbox Game Pass first.
You play as an Outrider, an elite soldier who helps prepare another planet for what's left of humanity to colonize it, but something goes drastically wrong. Get past the middling first couple of hours (and some iffy writing and acting), and Outriders kicks into a higher gear once your character becomes mutated. You can select one of four classes, each with their own set of unlockable abilities.
The powers and weapon abilities are a blast to play around with, especially when you team up with a friend and combo your special moves. There are a vast number of potential loadouts and character builds you can run with. You can also switch up your gear, abilities and skill tree at any time. The cover system works well enough, but it's better to play aggressively, since you'll only heal by killing enemies.
People Can Fly/Square Enix
Outriders looks good, with a grimy tone that’s more Gears of War than Destiny. There are a bunch of different biomes, each with a distinct aesthetic, though many parts of levels are just tunnels that funnel you from one encounter to the next. It’s easy to make comparisons with Destiny 2: Both games are futuristic shooters in which you can mow down waves of enemies and constantly hunt for better gear.
Outriders isn’t a live service game, though, nor can you battle other players. It has a focused story, with side missions and endgame challenges you can go on after you finish the campaign. They do get repetitive, though. At a certain point, grinding for better items means little more than seeing higher numbers on your weapon stats and floating above enemies when you attack them. It might have actually been better as an ongoing game with frequent content additions.
Still, there's nothing to lose by checking out Outriders on Xbox Game Pass, where it has been available since its launch day.
For at least the last year or so, there’s been a common refrain about Xbox Game Pass: it’s one of the best deals in gaming. There’s definitely some merit to that, as the service includes a ton of major first-party games, like Microsoft Flight Simulator, as well as Bethesda titles and a bunch of killer indies for a single monthly fee. Offering players easier access to Game Pass on more devices through the cloud sweetens the deal.
Big third-party games are an important aspect of the service as well, including a bunch of EA titles games and, of course, Outriders, which is practically a perfect fit for Game Pass.
Square Enix and People Can Fly deserve props for putting out a lengthy Outriders demo that’s long enough for you to get a good sense of each classes’ powers. If you have Game Pass Ultimate, though, you can keep going without having to pay extra.
Outriders is solid. It's exactly the kind of thing Microsoft could use more of on Game Pass, a fun, big third-party game you might be interested in, but don't want to spend $60 on. Sure, the library has plenty of far better games, but whenever you and a couple of buddies are in the mood for some relatively mindless alien-murdering carnage without having to fire up Destiny 2 yet again, Outriders hits the spot.
