The plans for an It Takes Two movie appear to be solidifying. Deadline and Variety sources claim Amazon Studios and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's Seven Bucks Productions have taken up the game-to-movie adaptation alongside Sonic the Hedgehog production company dj2 Entertainment. There's even a chance Johnson could star in the movie, the insiders said.
We've asked Amazon for comment. The Prime Video operator's involvement would make sense when dj2 has a "first look" deal with Amazon, as do the movie's executive producers (and writers) Pat Casey and Josh Miller. It Takes Two developer Hazelight Studios' Josef Fares and Oskar Wolontis will also executive produce.
It's still not certain when a movie might launch. The project might stand a better chance of succeeding than some big-screen game adaptations, though. Casey and Miller are widely credited with the success of the two Sonic the Hedgehog movies. Moreover, It Takes Two's plot could be well-suited to a movie format — it sees a couple on the brink of divorce embark on a fantastical journey that helps them rediscover each other. It's just a question of whether or not Amazon, dj2 and Seven Bucks can translate the co-op game's concept to a passive entertainment format.
Netflix might offer cheaper, ad-supported plans in the coming years. In the company's most recent earnings call, co-CEO Reed Hastings said the company is working on the offering, and it’ll finalize details for those plans "over the next year or two."
The service lost around 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022, a development it blamed on stiffer competition, inability to expand in some territories due to technological limitations and pesky account sharing. It also lost 700,000 subscribers in early March after its decision to suspend service in Russia.
To tackle account sharing, Netflix has tested a feature in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru that allowed subscribers to add two "sub-members," who'll get their own log-ins and profiles, for $3 — much less than the typical subscription cost. Netflix executives noted on its earning call that this model could expand to other countries. We’ve put our account-sharing parents and children on notice.
Revenue rose to $18.76 billion in the face of rising inflation.
Tesla built 305,000 vehicles in the first "exceptionally difficult" quarter of this year, delivered 310,000 vehicles to customers and opened new factories in Berlin and Austin — all while CEO Elon Musk sought a highly publicized hostile takeover of Twitter. And just generally made headlines.
Like many companies, Tesla faces an increasingly tight supply of critical semiconductors and rising prices spurred by inflation brought on by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It’s also currently navigating the shuttering of its Gigafactory in Shanghai, which closed due to COVID outbreaks in the region.
Glorious PC Gaming Race, the maker of the Model O gaming mouse, the GMMK Pro mechanical keyboard and other popular peripherals, is changing its name. In rebranding as Glorious, the company is hoping to leave behind a name tinged with racial overtones. “While we remain committed to serving PC gamers and not taking ourselves too seriously, we have also grown and matured significantly as a brand,” Shazim Mohammad, the founder and CEO of Glorious, said in a statement.
SpaceX has wanted to put Starlink internet on planes for quite some time.
Delta Chief Executive Ed Bastian has revealed in an interview that the airline held talks with SpaceX and conducted "exploratory tests" of Starlink's internet technology for its planes. According to The Wall Street Journal, Bastian declined to divulge specifics about the test, but SpaceX’s Jonathan Hofeller mentioned the company's discussions with several airlines back in mid-2021.
Sega has announced its Sonic Origins collection will debut June 23rd on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Switch. The $40 (£33) standard version will include remasters of Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic CD, while a $45 (£37) Digital Deluxe edition adds difficult missions, exclusive music and cosmetics. Because it’s 2022.
‘AMP harms users' privacy, security and internet experience.’
Brave is bypassing any pages rendered with AMP and taking users directly to the original website. "Where possible, De-AMP will rewrite links and URLs to prevent users from visiting AMP pages altogether,” the company wrote in a blog post.
The faster load times you might experience with Google’s AMP pages — hard to complain about that — are undercut by the way they offer Google a much tighter grip on advertising, hosting content on its servers. A group of publishers recently announced it was moving away from AMP, and a lawsuit filed by several US states accuses Google of running a monopoly that harmed both advertising rivals and publishers.
Meta hid a heck of a surprise up the sleeve of its boiler suit for the end of its Quest gaming showcase. A Ghostbusters VR game is in the works for Meta Quest 2. Sony Pictures Virtual Reality (SPVR) will publish the four-player co-op game, which is being developed by Far Cry VR: Dive Into Insanity studio nDreams.
Ghostbusters VR (as the game is called for the time being) shifts the action from the franchise's home base of New York City to San Francisco. No prizes for guessing that you'll hunt down and trap ghosts with the help of your proton pack and particle thrower. SPVR says the game will have an "extensive and engrossing campaign" that you can experience solo or with up to three friends. No release window was announced, but SPVR says more will be revealed in the coming months.
It's not the only Ghostbusters title in the pipeline either. Friday the 13th: The Game developer Illfonic is making Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, which will pit a team of four players against someone else who controls the ghost. That game is scheduled to arrive on PC, PlayStation and Xbox later this year.
Apple Music's spatial audio is now available for those who'd rather spend their nights at the club than the concert hall. The service is now offering DJ mixes in Dolby Atmos that promise a more immersive dance music experience — not quite like sweating through an all-night rave, but considerably closer. The initiative kicks off today with an enhanced One Mix set from Detroit techno legend Jeff Mills (above) as well as 15 Boiler Room sets from stars like Boys Noize and The Blessed Madonna.
You can expect more spatial audio mixes throughout the year, including monthly One Mix episodes and Boiler Room albums. Apple hasn't teased future artists, although it is promising the "finest DJs" from the dance and electronic music realms.
Spatial audio is only automatically enabled for AirPods and some Beats headphones. You can use capable third-party gear, but you'll need to manually enable support and forego head tracking.
It's not surprising to see Apple expand Atmos support to the mix-and-scratch crowd. Spatial audio is a selling point for Apple Music and AirPods, of course, but electronic artists were also some of the first to embrace surround sound — just ask anyone familiar with Amon Tobin's gigs. In theory, you're more likely to keep your Apple Music membership knowing that a favorite DJ might produce an Atmos mix you won't get at rival services.
Brave is putting Google's Accelerate Mobile Pages (AMP) on blast with a new feature called De-AMP, The Verge reported. It's designed to bypass any pages rendered with AMP and take users directly to the original website. "Where possible, De-AMP will rewrite links and URLs to prevent users from visiting AMP pages altogether,” the company wrote in a blog post.
If that's not possible, then "Brave will watch as pages are being fetched and redirect users away from AMP pages before the page is even rendered, preventing AMP/Google code from being loaded and executed," it added.
The new feature was implemented in the name of privacy, security and internet experience, according to Brave. "In practice, AMP is harmful to users and to the Web at large," the article states. "Just as bad, AMP helps Google further monopolize and control the direction of the web." It adds that the next iteration of AMP "will be even worse."
Google originally promoted AMP as a way to improve the mobile web experience by loading pages faster. However, it has recently been a target of critics who see it as a way for Google to increase its hegemony in the internet ad market by hosting content on its own servers. A group of publishers recently announced it was moving away from AMP, and a lawsuit filed by several US states accuses Google of running a monopoly that harmed ad-industry competitors and publishers.
Brave promises "the best privacy online" with its browser, so of course attacking Google is part of its business strategy. Despite its efforts, though, it lags well behind most other browsers in mobile market share, sitting in the "other" category behind Internet Explorer on Statcounter. De-AMP is now available in beta and "will be enabled by default in the upcoming 1.38 Desktop and Android versions, and will be released on iOS soon after," Brave said.
Netflix might offer cheaper ad-supported plans in the coming years. In the company's most recent earnings call, co-CEO Reed Hastings has revealed that the streaming giant is currently working on the offering and that it will be finalizing details for those plans "over the next year or two." Hastings said he finds ads complex and he's a huge fan of the simplicity of subscriptions, but giving consumers who don't mind watching ads the option to pay less "makes a lot of sense."
And it could make a lot of sense for the company, too. The service lost around 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022, a development it blamed on stiffer competition, inability to expand in some territories due to technological limitations and account sharing. Apparently, 222 million households are paying for Netflix, but over 100 million more are sharing those accounts.
Back in March, Netflix started testing a feature in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru that allowed subscribers to add two "sub-members," who'll get their own log-ins and profiles, for $3. It may just be a fraction of what a full membership costs, but at least Netflix is getting something from people who'd normally just borrow their friends' accounts.
Hastings clarified during the call that the ad-supported memberships will be added as tiers and members who don't mind paying full subscription fees don't have to be subjected to advertisements. "It is pretty clear that it is working for Hulu, Disney is doing it, HBO did it. We don't have any doubt that it works," he said. The executive also added that Netflix will merely be a publisher and that it will not track user data to match ads like some of its competitors do.
Amy Hennig’s Skydance New Media studio is working on not one but two new games with Disney. Following last year’s Marvel announcement, Hennig and company revealed today they’re working on a AAA Star Wars game with Lucasfilm Games. And just like the studio’s Marvel collaboration, fans can expect a “narrative-driven, action-adventure” experience. Lucasfilm Games said the title would tell a new original story set within the Star Wars galaxy but offered few other details on the project, including a release date or target platforms.
“I’ve often described how seeing Star Wars in 1977 essentially rewired my 12-year-old brain, shaping my creative life and future indelibly,” said Hennig, whose previous credits include the Uncharted series from Naughty Dog. “I’m elated to be working with Lucasfilm Games again to tell interactive stories in this galaxy that I love.”
For Hennig, Tuesday’s announcement marks a return to the Star Wars franchise. Before founding Skydance New Media, she worked at EA’s Visceral Games studio on a Star Wars game that was ultimately canceled by the publisher. Her game is one of a handful of new Star Wars titles currently in development. Respawn Entertainment is working on three new games, including a sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Fans can also look forward to Star Wars: Eclipse from Detroit: Become Human developer Quantic Dream.
After all that waiting, Senior Editor Jessica Conditt finally got her hands on Playdate. From the makers of Firewatch and meme-friendly Untitled Goose Game, it’s a petite portable console that marries the familiarity of the GameBoy with the spirit of indie game innovation. That last bit might sound like hollow platitudes, but well, it’s true.
This isn’t a console for FPS, teraflops or anything MMO, it’s like a pixel-filled brainstorm of delights. Having said that, if you decide to order the handheld today, you're in for a wait. "We've filled our production capacity for 2022, but we're ramping up to make even more systems," the company says on its website.
Maybe I’ll wait out for Playdate 2. I’ll always have my fishing controller, but it’s not the same.
If you want an electric van, your options are limited, which is precisely what VW is hoping to address with the upcoming ID.Buzz. At the New York International Auto Show, we finally got to check it out.
It’s slated to go on sale sometime in 2024, featuring a 77 kWh battery and two rows of seats for the European model (which is the version VW had on display) or a full three rows of seats and slightly longer chassis for the US market. Other specs, like its range and price, are still TBD.
Samsung’s Galaxy A53 5G offers one of the better displays on a midrange phone, with a 2,400 by 1,080 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. But Samsung’s slow Exynos 1280 chipset struggles, even with basic tasks. If you’re set on a Samsung phone and have an extra $100 to spend, consider the Galaxy S21 FE, which has been heavily discounted since its launch last year.
Battlefield 2042 will finally get in-game voice chat, but with caveats. The VoIP feature won't work across an entire team. The only channel options are for parties and squads (with a maximum of four members). Given that teams can have up to 64 players, voice chat could get messy fast with that many people talking over each other. A proximity-based option might have been helpful for callouts, though. Sigh.
Nintendo Switch Sports and Elon Musk's ongoing Twitter affair.
This week, Cherlynn Low and guest co-host Sam Rutherford discuss the new Nintendo Switch Sports games, a coincidental week of beauty gadget coverage and the ongoing saga of Elon Musk trying to own Twitter.
Nintendo's first anime movie, from 1986, is back. Femboy Films has released a 4K remaster of The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach on both YouTube and the Internet Archive. You’ll get clean, color-corrected visuals based on a rare 16mm print, and new English subtitles and a fresh two-channel Dolby Surround audio capture from the VHS release. Oh, and Mario and Luigi work at a grocery store now.
A new, big budget reboot of Crazy Taxihas already been in development for more than a year, and is expected to launch within the next three years. That’s the revelation issued forth by Bloomberg today, suggesting that a rebooted Jet Set Radio is also currently gestating with a similar development timeline. Both titles are part of Sega’s Super Game project, which the company first teased back in early 2021 as a way of accelerating the developer's recovery.
Details about Super Game have been thin on the ground but Shuji Utsumi, the former PlayStation executive leading the project, has let some things slip. Back in April, he said that the project would involve a series of AAA titles leveraging cloud gaming and, deep sigh, NFTS. Late last year, Sega announced that it was teaming up with Microsoft’s Azure cloud division to help produce large-scale “global games.”
When Super Game was announced, Sega bandied around references to its Silver Age blockbusters including Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Panzer Dragoon and Virtua Fighter. According to Bloomberg, these titles are going to be reborn in the Fortnite mould as a free-to-play, massively online title. Sega is reportedly staking its business on the riches on offer from such titles, which already have devoted cult followings. Of course, as with any title this early in its lifespan, Sega could pull the plug before it reaches players, but it's about time we had something nice in this life, and no amount of NFTs can make us hate Crazy Taxi... right?
The third season of Netflix's animation anthology Love, Death and Robots will bow on May 20th. The streamer teased the release with a short video showing the same adult-oriented themes and wide variety of animation styles as the previous volumes.
The series is produced by Tim Miller and David Fincher, who has a four-year exclusivity deal with Netflix. In the trailer, Netflix showed short clips of The Crown, The Queen's Gambit and other shows as a way to contrast them with the far more intense "problem child" animated show. "The threesome you've been waiting for," the tagline states.
The styles run the gamut from hyper-realistic with a Gulliver-like character to 2D cel animation, with just about everything in between. The series has garnered solid critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, though audience scores dropped in volume 2 when it toned down the nudity and gore. The number of episodes also dropped in the second season with eight compared to 18 in volume 1. Netflix didn't say how many episodes are coming with volume 3, but you'll only have to wait a day to find out.
