Bandai Namco expected FromSoftware's Elden Ring to sell 4 million copies in five weeks. It would've been already impressive if that's what had happened, considering Dark Souls 3sold 3 million copies within a month of its release. Elden Ring, however, eclipsed the company's expectations: It sold 12 million units worldwide, 1 million of which were sold in Japan alone, within 18 days of its release. The companies have announced the game's blockbuster sales numbers in a press release and also mentioned the possibility of expanding the IP "beyond the realm of games." 

According to the announcement, those numbers came from the "distribution figures of the package version and sales figures of the downloadable versions" as of March 14th, 2022. With those sales numbers, Elden Ring smashed a bunch of other records associated with Souls-type games. FromSoftware's previous release, Sekiro, sold 2 million copies in 10 days, and it took four years for Dark Souls 3, the best-selling game in the series, to reach 10 million units sold worldwide. Based on how well it's doing, it seems apt to compare Elden Ring to Pokémon Legends Arceus, which sold 6.5 million copies in seven days — and that's a game from a franchise that already has a massive following. 

FromSoftware developed Elden Ring with help from A Song of Ice and Fire creator George R. R. Martin, who wrote the overarching mythos for the game that features Lovecraftian creatures and dragons. At the helm of the project was Hidetaka Miyazaki, known for creating the notoriously difficult Souls games, as well as directing Bloodborne and Sekiro. It was supposed to be available back in January but was ultimately released on February 25th for the PlayStation 5 and 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC via Steam.

European Union officials have unconditionally rubber stamped Amazon's $845 million bid to buy famed movie and TV studio MGM. The European Commission's antitrust regulators determined there was limited overlap between the companies and said the merger wouldn't severely reduce competition in the theatrical film and audio-visual content markets.

"The Commission found that MGM's upstream activities as a producer and licensor of AV content are limited compared to other market players' activities; MGM's content cannot be considered as must-have; and a wide variety of alternative content exists," the EC said. It noted MGM's movies account for a limited share of box office revenue in the European Economic Area and that "overall MGM is not among the top production studios, despite its rights over successful film franchises such as James Bond."

Amazon still requires the green light from the Federal Trade Commission before it can close the deal, which was announced last May. Recent reports suggested the FTC was planning to challenge the merger with an antitrust lawsuit. However, that requires a majority vote by commissioners.

The FTC currently has two Democrat and two Republican commissioners. The Information reported that while they have reached a bipartisan consensus on some issues, a vote on an Amazon-MGM suit could be split along party lines. The Senate has yet to vote on Alvaro Bedoya's nomination to the commission.

In any case, the deadline for a decision on the proposed MGM buyout is said to be fast approaching, reportedly sometime in mid-March. If the FTC doesn't mount a legal challenge by then, Amazon could be free to proceed with the merger.

Google is finally sharing more about how it will deliver Stadia game streaming to other companies. The search firm used its Google for Games Developer Summit to detail Immersive Stream for Games, its "expanded" Stadia platform for third parties. The offering lets businesses offer cloud gaming for a wide range of players — not just subscribers.

As with Stadia itself, a "Click to Play Trials" feature will let gamers test full titles without an account. You'll know if you like a game without having to download it. You can also browse a game store without an account. Accordingly, Google wants to simplify bringing games to the platform through a "Low Change Porting" effort that should reduce the work needed to make games streaming-friendly.

It may take a while for all these features to reach early Immersive Stream adopters. The open storefront model is due in the "coming weeks," while trials are coming sometime in 2022. Easier porting is still in testing. AT&T already used the rough version of the platform to offer Batman: Arkham Knight for free in October, though, and it's teasing an upcoming second game that will finally let you stream on mobile, not just on desktop.

The expansion to outside companies was largely expected. It's no secret that Google has struggled to grow Stadia, and closed its in-house game studios in early 2021. Immersive Stream gives the company a way to profit from Stadia's technology regardless of how well the core service fares, and might fend off competitors pitching their own cloud gaming toolkits.

Tencent has added yet another studio to its stable of game developers. On Tuesday, the company announced it recently acquired a majority stake in Tequila Works, the Madrid-based studio best known for its work on Rime. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Tequila Works said the investment would help take its games “to the next level.” The studio is currently working with Riot Games on Song of Nunu: A League of Legends Story. Incidentally, Riot Games is also owned by Tencent.

“We are delighted to ally with a partner that allows us to make Tequila Works a stronger studio with access to all the resources required to produce titles of the highest quality, all made with the care and passion our beloved fans know us for as well as the opportunity of bringing these projects to a wider audience,” said Tequila Works chairwoman Luz Sancho.

While Microsoft has dominated headlines with its high-profile acquisitions of Activision-Blizzard and Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media, Tencent has quietly amassed an empire of its own. In 2021, it invested in more than 100 gaming-related companies, including Back 4 Blood developer Turtle Rock and Sumo Group in a deal that saw Tencent acquire the LittleBigPlanet 3 studio for $1.26 billion.

Ms. Marvel, one of several Marvel Cinematic Universe shows coming to Disney+ this year, will premiere on June 8th. Disney also revealed a trailer for the series. It centers around Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), a Pakistani-American whose idol is Captain Marvel.

It's not too much of a spoiler to say that Kamala gains cosmic powers of her own, such as super strength and a shapeshifting ability, seemingly through mystical bracers. On top of becoming a superhero, Kamala has to contend with more ordinary aspects of life as a teenager, including high school, crushes, career counseling and parents.

Ms. Marvel (who'll be familiar to those who've read the comics or played Marvel's Avengers) is the MCU's first Muslim superhero. She'll also appear in The Marvels, which is scheduled to hit theaters on February 17th, 2023.

Before Ms. Marvel premieres, Moon Knight, which stars Oscar Issac, will debut on March 30th. On Wednesday, all the MCU shows that were previously exclusive to Netflix — including Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage — will arrive on Disney+.

In early 2021, a group of retail investors realized that GameStop shares had been recklessly over-shorted by major investors. Big funds, certain that the retailer was about to collapse, had shorted 140 percent of the company’s entire public shareholding. Individuals, who co-ordinated their efforts via a subreddit called r/WallStreetBets, knew that they could exploit this vulnerability. They bought up all of the outstanding GameStop stock and drove up the price, forcing the big funds to pay over the odds to avoid losing a fortune when their bet spectacularly backfired.

It’s this story that is outlined, more or less, in MSNBC’s new documentary, Diamond Hands: The Legend of WallStreetBets, which debuted at SXSW 2022. It tells the story from the perspective of some of the individuals who signed up early and held on to their stake. Some used the squeeze to make a fortune, while others came away with a more modest, but still fantastic, profit. The decision to focus on these personal stories makes for an engaging tale at the human level, albeit one that’s very one-sided.

The film’s general thesis is that the short squeeze took place mostly thanks to the internet and what it has enabled. Without Reddit to coordinate the trades and Robinhood acting, at least at first, as a way around the stuffed-shirt brokerages, none of this would have happened. There is a suggestion that people were motivated to get into investing as a consequence of the stimulus checks. Which I don’t agree with, mostly because people weren’t sinking thousands of dollars into GameStop if all they had was a spare $600 to their name.

It also affords, as far as I’m concerned, a surprising amount of time to talk about the broken social contract most millennials feel hurt by. As useless as the term is, since “millennial” means anyone aged 26 to 41, it’s weird to see MSNBC allowing those under 50 to talk about their plight. Perhaps this marks a new and refreshing change as people who have lived through the last twenty years of utter turmoil are now deemed respectable enough to appear on the news.

The other noticeable thing is the lack of expert commentary from the usual types of Very Serious Men in Finance. The big money fund-types that lost their shirts on GameStop chose not to appear in the film, and so their story isn’t told here. Similarly, you get about five sentences from Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, who became the internet’s most hated figure when his app chose to restrict trading on the platform, potentially prematurely ending the GameStop squeeze. The inequitable screen time makes the documentary’s coverage of some of the major players fairly merciless. Given Robinhood’s launch coincided with SXSW in 2015, it’s interesting to watch nearly 90 minutes of people saying that the app screwed them over at the same festival seven years later. We also don't get to speak to Keith Gill who, as Roaring Kitty, was at the heart of the effort to craft the initial short squeeze.

There is one annoyance that it’s worth being aware of is the film’s decision to create a visual style that apes the language of Reddit memes. Lots of gaudy iconography, remixes of old viral videos and the sort of amateur kitsch awfulness you see a lot online. It reminded me of an experiment Charlie Brooker did on the excesses of youth TV. He piled a bunch of teenagers into a screening room and told them to signal when they got bored while they watched a bunch of clips from screechy, in-your-face teen TV shows. What held them in rapt attention, however, was a sequence from an Adam Curtis documentary, with its slow narration and lack of any visual pizzazz. The point being that just because a subject deals with kitschy, out-there imagery from the internet, you don't need to jazz up the visuals to make your story entertaining.

Diamond Hands: The Legend of WallStreetBets premieres on MSNBC on April 10th at 10pm ET.

Just days after introducing a feature that made an algorithmically-generated feed the default for iOS users, Twitter is changing things back to the way they were before. “We heard you,” the company said. “Some of you always want to see latest tweets first. We’ve switched the timeline back and removed the tabbed experience for now while we explore other options.”

If didn’t follow the controversy Twitter created for itself, it all started last year when the company began testing a new tabbed interface for switching between its algorithmically-generated “Home” feed and reverse-chronolgical “Latest” feed. On March 10th, the company began rolling out the feature to iOS, promising it would come to its Android app and web client soon after. But what many people found, and ended up complaining about, was that the feature would default their feed to the algorithmic one every time they opened the app.

This isn’t the first time an internet company has rolled back a feature, but it shows that many people still want a chronological feed and dislike it when companies try to take that functionality away from them. When it comes to Twitter, there’s a case to be made that many people come to the platform to get first-hand accounts and information when there’s breaking news. So making that version of the website difficult to access isn’t doing anyone any favors.

The fish-out-of-water sitcom Ted Lasso took home four major awards Sunday at the 27th annual Critics Choice Awards, a night that was dominated by the streaming platforms. The Apple TV+ original nabbed best comedy series, beating out other critically-acclaimed favorites like HBO Max’s Hacks and Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building. Jason Sudeikis, who plays the show’s namesake character, won Best Actor in a comedy series for his performance in the show’s second season. It’s the second time Sudeikis has taken home that particular trophy for his role on the show, and he won it over the comedy legends Martin Short and Steve Martin, who were both nominated for Only Murders in the Building.

Brett Goldstein, the British actor who plays Roy Kent, the gruff but kindhearted former team captain, won best supporting actor in a comedy series. We’re about to see a lot more from him. Goldstein, who also serves as one of the show’s writers, recently signed a multiyear development deal with Warner Bros. TV, where he’ll develop, create and produce new projects for WBTV, including HBO Max. Finally, Hannah Waddingham, the British actress and West End veteran who plays Lasso’s boss, Rebecca Walton, won best supporting actress in a comedy series. Walton has also won an Emmy Award for her role in the series.

The night was a major victory for Apple TV+, which also scored nominations for CODA (Troy Kotsur won the best supporting actor in a film.) Ted Lasso scored the most awards this year of any nominated TV show. Thanks to the pandemic’s impact on the movie business, virtually every category included works from streaming platforms or premium cable channels like HBO and Showtime. The night was also a major victory for Netflix, which nabbed Best Picture for Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog.

The Critic Choice Awards have traditionally been overshadowed by the Golden Globes and SAG Awards. But thanks to some lucky timing and rescheduling, this year’s show makes it one of the last awards shows before both the Academy Awards and the Primetime Emmys, thus escalating its importance since it’ll be a likely forecast of future winners.

With the Kremlin restricting access to online platforms like Twitter and Instagram in recent days, people in Russia are quickly losing access to information about the war in Ukraine that doesn’t come from the government. Enter Squad303, a website created by a group of Polish programmers to help people from around the world establish a dialogue with their Russian counterparts.

Spotted by The Wall Street Journal, the website randomly generates a number or email address for you to contact. It pulls from a database that contains 20 million cellphone numbers and approximately 140 million email addresses. Since the Squad303 went online on March 6th, its creators told The Journal that individuals from around the world have sent nearly 7 million text messages and 2 million emails in Russian, along with countless images and videos from the conflict.

“Our aim was to break through Putin’s digital wall of censorship and make sure that Russian people are not totally cut off from the world and the reality of what Russia is doing in Ukraine,” a spokesperson for told the outlet.

The website is named after the Royal Air Force’s famous 303 Fighter Squadron. It was one 16 units made up of Polish airmen that flew for the RAF during World War II. The 303 played a pivotal role in the Battle of Britain, shooting down the largest number of Luftwaffe aircraft during the months-long campaign. In another historical allusion, the creators of Squad303 compared their project to Radio Free Europe, which began as a US-funded effort to broadcast news, information and analysis to Soviet satellite states during the Cold War.

Using the website, The Journal was able to talk to a 25-year-old law student from Moscow. They told the outlet they opposed the war but said they didn’t plan to protest against it for fear of retribution from the government. “Am I supposed to risk my education, my future?” the student said. “I know Putin is killing people in Ukraine, but it is not my fault, I am not killing anyone, and I am not supporting any wars.”

Even engaging in conversations like the one above is risky for Russians. Videos have recently emerged allegedly showing Russian police stopping commuters to screen the messages on their phones for signs of dissent.

Students of history learn the importance of primary sources; eyewitness accounts of what people saw and did when all of this history was going on. You also learn that there’s a great need for evidence to be gathered before the twin evils of memory and self-deception color the narratives. Just as important, however, are secondary sources which can collate all of that testimony, to pick out the truth, or at least a working theory about what went on.

Take WeWork, a startup that leases office space to individuals and small businesses with an emphasis on fancy design and an open bar. As Scott Galloway once said, “they’re renting f*cking desks,” but wound up inexplicably deemed to be worth $47 billion. Now, you might be wondering how exactly that came to be, but it’s not a question that Apple TV’s WeCrashed can answer. It can, in excruciating detail, lead you through the chronology of what happened, but why it happened remains frustratingly out of reach.

The series, adapted from the Wondery podcast of the same name, charts the rise and rise of Israeli entrepreneur Adam Neumann (Jared Leto). It charts Neumann’s life, from his stumbles at business school, meeting Miguel McKelvey (Kyle Marvin) and his future wife, Rebekah Paltrow (Anne Hathaway). Neumann and McKelvey launch Green Desk, a Brooklyn-based co-working company that they sell in order to repeat the feat in Manhattan under the name WeWork. Which, unlike Green Desk, makes a fairly sizable dent in the rarified world of investment banking and tech investments.

As usual, Apple asked critics not to spoil the details of the show. I can, however, safely recommend that you read the Wikipedia article to find out exactly what happened, which is a far more efficient and enjoyable way to spend your time. Suffice to say, a company deemed to be more valuable than the GDP of some countries winds up not being worth that much and some venture capital funds have to spend extra cash to clean up the error of their initial investment.

Unfortunately, the show’s biggest failure is that the above description is pretty much the level of stakes we’re expected to care about. The second is that a story that might have made a fairly breezy movie of the week on HBO drags on well beyond anyone’s tolerance to enjoy it. Third, and worst of all, is that it’s really hard to spend that much time in the company of Adam and Rebekah Neumann. Now, there are plenty of films and TV series that feature unlikeable yet compelling sociopaths as their lead characters, including the recently released Inventing Anna. And if WeCrashed had a more cohesive central thesis, or a clear-eyed view of these characters, then they might have been able to make the characters in any way compelling or pleasant. To say that spending eight hours in their company is a chore is a spectacular understatement.

Despite its never-ending running time, WeCrashed glosses over a fair number of details from the WeWork narrative. The Ballardian WeLive residential concept, which was detailed in Hulu’s WeWork documentary from last year, never gets a mention. More troublingly, the show glosses over the corporate culture of hard drinking and, reportedly, inter-office sexual assault that were widelydetailed at the time. The only time this is ever looked at, it’s as a montage showing people taking their turns with each other in a supply closet between rounds of drinks. And, because of how the show frames Adam as our, uh, hero, it almost celebrates the times he himself uses drinking (and bullying) to get his own way with would-be business partners. 

It’s interesting, to me, that WeCrashed seems to not have a clear idea of what sort of show it wants to be. If it wanted to portray the Neumanns as well-meaning ingenues out of their depth and manipulated by wider forces, it could have sanded off their rougher edges. If it wanted to make them the villains, it would have taken the sort of villain-as-hero perspective you’d find in a Martin Scorsese movie. But instead it sits in a middle ground, with silly gag bits sprinkled around what is otherwise a fairly po-faced prestige drama.

I will say, too, that viewers will notice that all of the people who backed and enabled Neumann are rarely treated critically. The people who wrote the checks, fed the beast and then threw a tantrum when it didn’t make a huge profit are always presented as well-meaning. This soft touch certainly extends toward Masayoshi Son, CEO of Softbank and head of Softbank’s Vision Fund. Softbank, if you recall, was Apple’s iPhone launch carrier in Japan, owns part of T-Mobile in the US and, most crucially, currently owns ARM, which licenses the technology that powers Apple Silicon. Sure depicting him at all is something of a risk, but he’s never presented as a fool, nor is it suggested that he was duped into investing in WeWork in the first place.

There are a couple of moments where a character is able to point at what’s unfolding in wide-eyed disbelief. But those are few and far between, again, maybe because it’s hard – yet – to see if WeWork is a success or a failure. It did go public, eventually, as part of a SPAC, and while it’s still a loss-making company, it may eventually rebound. It’s clear that you can’t pull, or land, a punch if you don’t know where your target is going to be in two or three years from now. If this story, for whatever reason, gets remade in the 2050’s, I bet it’ll be a lot more interesting than the one I’ve just sat through.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the WeCrashed’s creators were aiming for a show on the level of Succession. Unfortunately, while it does focus on “complex characters who are unlikeable worrying over their ownership stake of a company,” this feels more like a Billions knock-off. And not a good one at that.