Month: July 2020

Netflix has revealed the top 10 biggest opening months for their original movies with Extraction and Bird Box leading the way.

Bloomberg released the list of the top 10 movies that received the most views over their first four weeks. The Bloomberg article doesn’t say, but it’s assumed these are worldwide numbers as Netflix has 182.8 million subscribers worldwide, including 69.9 million in the USA as of April 2020, according to The New York Times.

It’s also worth mentioning that a view for Netflix is only two minutes because that’s “long enough to indicate the choice was intentional.”

Here are Netflix’s Top 10 biggest debuts for their original movies:

• 1. Extraction – 99 million
• 2. Bird Box – 89 million
• 3. Spenser Confidential – 85 million
• 4. 6 Underground – 83 million
• 5. Murder Mystery – 73 million
• 6. The Irishman – 64 million
• 7. Triple Frontier – 63 million
• 8. The Wrong Missy – 59 million
• 9. The Platform – 56 million
• 10. The Perfect Date – 48 million

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Every movie on the list was released in the past two years. The Sandra Bullock thriller Bird Box is the oldest movie having launched in December 2018 while the David Spade comedy, The Wrong Missy, is the most recent movie on the list, having debuted in May 2020. This is probably due to Netflix’s consistent growth over the years, including a recent coronavirus boom in subscribers. That could be why four of the movies on this list were released on Netflix in just the past few months.

Scott Stuber, the head of Netflix’s original film division, said he wants big movies to debut every couple of weeks.

“We want an impactful movie every two weeks,” Stuber said to Bloomberg. “For one person, that’s Extraction. For another, it’s The Wrong Missy.”

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Extraction has a sequel on the way with Joe Russo currently writing the script. Meanwhile, Bird Box author Josh Malerman is currently promoting his sequel novel which will hit stores this month. Malerman recently said a movie sequel is also in the works. The Adam Sandler-Jennifer Aniston comedy, Murder Mystery, also has a sequel in the works.

Click here for a list of everything coming to Netflix in July. One of those movies, The Old Guard, has been the number one movie on Netflix in the USA since its debut Friday. In our The Old Guard review, we said the movie “rises above its generic trappings thanks to its cool cast & world-building.”

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Petey Oneto is a freelance writer for IGN who saw The Irishman in an overpriced, overheated, crowded, talkative movie theater and really wishes he just waited for Netflix instead.

Microsoft is set to host its next Xbox Games Showcase next week, on July 23, which the company has now detailed a little further in a new blog post.

The message for the stream is clear: games. Microsoft says viewers can expect their first look at Halo Infinite’s campaign during the event, as well as updates on already announced titles and brand-new world premieres. Unlike the company’s previous stream in May, this showcase is centered on first-party titles which will come to Xbox and PC.

Responding to rumors surrounding the event, Xbox’s Aaron Greenberg clarified further on Twitter that the event will be just about games and nothing else, squashing hopes of a surprise console reveal for the heavily rumored Xbox Lockhart or talk of a price for the Xbox Series X.

The stream will be an hour long and streamed across YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Twitter. Like Sony’s PS5 reveal stream, the event will cap out at 1080p/60fps during the live broadcast, but Microsoft has promised full 4K trailer uploads after it has concluded.

Microsoft’s first big stream for the Xbox Series X took place in May with a host of third-party reveals and console exclusives. The stream was criticized for not featuring much gameplay, with Greenberg apologizing the day afterwards. Microsoft also recently announced that xCloud will be included in Game Pass Ultimate starting this September.

Necrobarista, a long-awaited visual novel with a lot of style and an anime-inspired aesthetic, has finally confirmed a PC release date–and it’s close. The game will release for Steam and GOG on July 22, while console players will have to wait a bit longer–a Switch and PS4 release is planned for 2021.

The game is set in Melbourne, Australia, and features full 3D environments and characters to explore in first-person, and it’s aiming for a cinematic feel. It’s set in a cafe where the dead are able to return and interact with the living–but only for one night.

The soundtrack has been composed by Kevin Penkin, who previously worked on Florence.

In 2019, the game made GameSpot’s round-up of the best games of PAX Australia. It is being translated into thirteen languages beyond English, too, including Korean, Arabic, and Russian.

The game’s Steam page also promises an appearance from Australian bushranger and icon Ned Kelly, which should be interesting.

Composer Sarah Schachner is returning to the Assassin’s Creed series for Valhalla this year, working alongside another Assassin’s Creed veteran, Jesper Kyd, for the game’s music.

Schachner has now shared one of her songs from the soon-to-release Valhalla EP, Out of the North. The track, “The Sceptred Isle,” is slow and brooding, featuring harmonizing vocals and leaving you with a feeling of both dread and awe. Or at least that’s what I hear. It sounds like something out of Game of Thrones or The Lord of the Rings.

Schachner told Collider of her music for Valhalla, “My score for Valhalla portrays the different cultures of the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons but also merges the two together, reflecting the Vikings’ evolution as they invade and conquer, then integrate into Anglo-Scandinavian society and even convert to Christianity.”

For The Sceptred Isle specifically, Schachner said she was attempting to blend both cultures and foreshadow their violent history. The lyrics, meanwhile, come from an old Norse runestone.

Have a listen for yourself:

“The Sceptred Isle” is one of seven songs from the Valhalla EP, Out of the North, which also features compositions from Kyd and Einar Selvik. The album releases on July 17.

Schachner also composed music for Assassin’s Creed Unity and Assassin’s Creed Origins; more recently, she composed the score for 2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. As for Jesper Kyd, he composed the music for the original Assassin’s Creed game, along with Assassin’s Creed II, Brotherhood, and Revelations. Einar Selvik, meanwhile, is the former drummer of the metal band Gorgoroth and the current singer of Norse band Wardruna.

For lots more on Valhalla, check out GameSpot’s new hands-on impressions in the video above. You can also read Jordan’s interview with narrative director Darby McDevitt and assistant level design director Laurence Letalien about Eivor’s mysterious identity, the interwoven story, and more.

One of the big changes for EA Sports UFC 4 is that the game has dropped the Ultimate Team mode that featured in some previous entries. It was a seemingly surprising move, given Ultimate Team was featured in UFC 2 and UFC 3, and, across EA’s wider sports catalog, Ultimate Team mode is a lucrative money-maker that brings in millions of dollars from microtransactions every year. In a blog post, creative director Brian Hayes explained EA’s reasoning for the change in more depth.

Hayes acknowledged that it might be surprising to learn there won’t be an Ultimate Team mode in UFC 4, and it’s a decision that EA Sports took care to consider before making a call.

Starting off, the sport of MMA does not involve a team, but instead one fighter. Fighters have coaches and trainers, but only two people step into the octagon to compete. “So Ultimate Team, as a concept, has struggled to fit and resonate in the context of MMA,” Hayes said. “We spent lots of time and resources in UFC 2 and UFC 3 to make it fun and engaging, but the feedback we received directly and through player data was that it still isn’t as engaging as we intended for it to be.”

Hayes also shared that EA’s own player data shows that UFC players generally didn’t have much interest in the UFC Ultimate Team modes from UFC 2 and UFC 3 compared to EA’s other sports games. “Lots of people played it and some still do–but the large majority of our fans prefer to spend their time elsewhere. That fact is loud and clear through our game data and couldn’t be ignored,” Hayes said.

The math “just doesn’t make sense” to support Ultimate Team mode in UFC 4 when looking at the number of people who play it and the amount of time and resources it takes to support it.

“Even to port it from UFC 3 to UFC 4 without any material changes or improvements required significant time and effort, let alone revamping the mode to make it more fun and engaging,” Hayes said.

“So we made the decision to refocus those resources toward new features and updates we hope all our players will enjoy,” Hayes said.

EA has made a series of gameplay improvements for UFC 4–like dynamic striking and updated takedowns and grapples–along with changes to make progression more unified across modes. Still, Hayes said he feels for the people who enjoyed Ultimate Team modes in UFC games from the past.

“If you were, or are, an avid UFC Ultimate Team player we understand that this isn’t good news, and if you’re disappointed, I apologize,” Hayes said. “Even though it’s a smaller group of fans, we know that those fans enjoy the mode and it is not easy to take that away.”

UFC 4 launches on August 14 for PS4 and Xbox One. Everyone who pre-orders gets exclusive fighters Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua, along with customization packs for the Backyard and Kumite. EA Access subscribers can start playing on August 7.