Diablo Immortal, the mobile revealed at BlizzCon 2018 to considerable controversy, has debuted some new footage. The new trailer shows off six of the game’s classes, and how the combat in this spin-off is shaping up.
We get a quick look at the Barbarian, Crusader, Demon Hunter, Monk, Necromancer, and Wizard classes, which seem likely to return in this game.
The new footage, which was uploaded to the Chinese Diablo Immortal website, is direct from Chinese gaming convention ChinaJoy. As pointed out by Polygon, it also shows off Baal, the villain from Diablo II. It seems like they will be returning.
You can watch the trailer, uploaded by Blizzard Watch, below. The trailer has not actually been uploaded by the official Blizzard channels, or in English, as of yet.
GameSpot went hands-on with Diablo Immortal at BlizzCon 2018, and writer Alessandro Fillari came away cautiously optimistic. “I was surprisingly pleased with how Immortal played, and it’ll be interesting to see how the game will pan out once it launches,” he wrote.
On July 15, a Twitter hack targeting some of the platform’s most high-profile users caused chaos on the site, with Twitter temporarily restricting verified users from posting at all. The hack had users like Bill Gates, Kanye West, and Obama tweeting out a bitcoin scam to millions of followers.
Now, a 17-year-old Florida teenager has been arrested over the hack, and a New York Times profile has delved into his history of hacks and online scams. Friends told the New York Times that Graham Ivan Clark started playing Minecraft at age 10 to escape an unhappy home life, and soon became adept at scamming other players.
Like many young gamers, Clark dabbled with YouTube, building an audience playing Minecraft in PVP-oriented servers. He reportedly used the username Open, or OpenHCF. The Times report tracked down a number of players who had been scammed by someone with the same username–usually offering to sell a username or a rare cape and then blocking the user once money had been sent.
One player described how he offered to buy Clark’s own username “Open” for $100, but then was blocked once the transaction was sent. “I was just kind of a dumb teenager, and looking back, there’s no way I should have ever done this,” the user told the Times. “Why should I ever have trusted this dude?”
Clark’s seemingly practiced Minecraft scams are now preserved in a number of YouTube videos by other Minecraft players, exposing the most common ways he scammed other players.
After the Twitter hack, Clark is being charged as an adult with 30 felonies. He had previously been involved in a large bitcoin theft, but was not charged due to being a minor.
A new report claims that Sony plans to make new PlayStation 5 announcements this month.
Bloomberg says a PlayStation official – who remained anonymous, as the plan isn’t public – explained that Sony “tentatively” plans to make its next announcement in August.
It’s not clear when that announcement will take place, nor what it will be. That said, it feels likely that the announcement would centre around the console’s price and release date, which the remain the major unknowns around PS5 (and its competitor Xbox Series X).
That would fit into Sony’s recent statement saying preorders for the console won’t come as a surprise – meaning it’s feasible that this next announcement will serve as the early warning for preorders opening.
Worldwide Head of Marketing Eric Lempel previously said “I think it’s safe to say…we’ll let you know when preorder will happen. It’s not going to happen with a minute’s notice. We’re going to at some point let you know when you can preorder PlayStation 5. So, please, don’t feel like you have to go run out and line up anywhere until you receive official notice on how that will work.”
Whatever this announcement is, we know it won’t be a part of August 6’s State of Play, which will focus on upcoming third-party published PS4 and PS VR games, with check-ins on PS5 games announced at the PS5 reveal showcase, but will feature “no big PS5 announcements.”
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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Blizzard Entertainment staff are revolting over pay, after an internal study meant to ensure fair pay didn’t produce the desired results for workers. According to a Bloomberg report, employees began sharing an anonymous salary spreadsheet on Friday, encouraging people to share their salary and recent pay increases.
Most of the pay increases given after Blizzard’s study were less than 10%, which Bloomberg reports is significantly less than most people expected. Employees at Blizzard Entertainment have previously described having to skip meals to make rent, while one veteran claims they are making less now than they were with Blizzard almost a decade ago.
“Our goal has always been to ensure we compensate our employees fairly and competitively,” an Activision Blizzard spokesperson told Bloomberg. “We are constantly reviewing compensation philosophies to better recognize the talent of our highest performers and keep us competitive in the industry, all with the aim of rewarding and investing more in top employees.”
Sony’s latest financial report, covering the first quarter of the 2020 financial year, is now live, and there are some interesting takeaways about how the PS4 is going. Sales for the system were down, but with good reason, and a majority of software sales were digital.
Sony is reporting that PS Plus subscription numbers have risen to 45 million, while the increase in PS Now users is also “significant”. 45 million is a big increase from the 41.5 million figure reported in May, which suggests that a lot of players stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic are playing online.
The pandemic also likely accounts for the huge increase in digital game sales. 74% of PS4 game sales for the quarter were digital, with The Last of Us Part II and Ghost of Tsushima cited as big sellers. The latter broke the record for a new IP on the system, while the former is the fastest-selling game ever for PlayStation.
Sales for the PS4 console were slower. 1.9 million systems were sold, down from 3.2 million the previous year. However, there were also production issues might have impacted sales. “Although production of PlayStation 4 hardware was slightly impacted due to issues in the component supply chain, these issues have now been addressed,” the report reads. As of right now, a PS4 can be built in 30 seconds–but stores have also been closed.
PS4 sales previously stood at 110.4 million, meaning that the PS4 has now sold 112.3 million units. Looking at the all-time console sales charts, the system stands a good chance of overtaking the Game Boy/Game Boy Color (118.69 million) to become the third-best selling console of all time.
The report also briefly touches on the PS5, but does not say much beyond again suggesting that the system will not miss a 2020 launch. “Regarding the launch of PlayStation 5, although factors such as constraints due to employees working from home and restrictions on international travel remain, necessary measures are being taken and preparations are underway with the launch of the console scheduled for the 2020 holiday season,” the report reads. “At this time, no major problems have arisen in the game software development pipeline for Sony’s own first-party studios or its partners’ studios.”
Overall, Sony is expecting sales of games and network services to “increase significantly year-on-year” with the launch of the PS5. However, this does not mean huge profits, necessarily. “Operating income is expected to be essentially flat year-on-year primarily due to the above-mentioned expected significant increase in game software sales and PS Plus sales, substantially offset by an expected increase in selling, general and administrative expenses related to the introduction of PS5 and an expected increase in the cost of sales ratio for hardware,” the report says.
Originally scheduled to be opened in 2023, the park has yet to be constructed, and is now on indefinite hold as a cost-saving measure due to the pandemic’s impact on the entertainment industry. The delay was revealed on Comcast’s Q2 2020 Earnings call.
“We are continually adjusting our cost base and capital, including pausing development of our Epic Universe project in Florida, for example, until the future becomes more certain,” NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell said.
Universal Studios Japan has also delayed the opening of its Super Nintendo World, after the Tokyo Olympics were pushed back to 2021. The Japanese version of the park was due to open in the summer to coincide with the Olympics, with images and videos of some of its Mario-themed attractions leaking online.
Netflix’s VP of original films, Tendo Nagenda, has shared some new insight on the types of projects that Netflix wants to make going forward and which directors he’d like to work with.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Nagenda said some of his “dream projects” are tentpole “adventure films” similar to Star Wars and Harry Potter.
“We’re looking at big, broad-audience, PG-level adventure films as something that we want to get into. Something along the lines of the first Star Wars, or Harry Potter 1 and 2,” Nagenda said. “A lot of family live action, fantasy, spectacle movies that we think are big and can play great. A Jumanji-type of story. That is the next frontier.”
Nagenda said Netflix’s overall mission with its original movies is to pursue “new ideas” and projects that traditional studios might pass on. “George Lucas created Star Wars–it wasn’t based on a book,” he said. “If you have that kind of imagination–like the Wachowskis with The Matrix–we feel like we’re the place to take the chance on those types of innovative ideas and filmmakers.”
And regarding which directors Netflix wants to work with, Nagenda called out people like the Oscar-winning Get Out director Jordan Peele and Inception helmer Christopher Nolan. Nagenda also said Netflix is a big fan of Inglourious Basterds director Quentin Tarantino.
“We have to concentrate our efforts on finding people of that talent level that we can work with as early as possible and then get them to make movies only for Netflix,” he said.
In 2017, Nolan told IndieWire that he would never work with Netflix due to what he described as the company’s anti-movie theatre stance.
Netflix has already been successful in luring a huge name to make a movie for the streaming network. The company financed Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, and it proved to be one of the platform’s most popular movies ever, even if it didn’t win any of the Oscars it was nominated for.
Take-Two reported its earnings on Monday, and the Grand Theft Auto company is flying high. Take-Two pulled in $831.3 million for its fiscal first quarter, the highest ever amount of money it’s made in a Q1 in the company’s 26-year history. The uptick in sales was driven by the pandemic–people are staying at home, playing more games, and spending more money on them.
Take-Two’s microtransaction business, which is called “recurrent consumer spending,” rose by a whopping 52 percent during the quarter to $482,153,999, led by GTA Online, NBA 2K20, Red Dead Online, and Borderlands 3.
“With more people staying at home, we have experienced, and are continuing to experience, heightened levels of engagement and net bookings growth-to-date,” Take-Two said. “The full extent of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to our business, operations, and financial results will depend on numerous evolving factors that we are not able to predict.”
Grand Theft Auto V continues to be a bright spot for Take-Two. It has now sold a breathtaking 135 million copies, which is up from 120 million the last time Take-Two announced numbers in February 2020. In fact, the 15 million copies sold in the past quarter represents the strongest growth for the game on a unit basis since the game released in 2013, according to GI.biz.
GTA Online continues to grow, too, with its microtransaction sales jumping by 155 percent year-over-year, management told GI.biz.
GTA V and GTA Online are primed to grow further still, as Rockstar Games is re-releasing the game on PS5 and Xbox Series X in the second half of 2021. The new editions come with a range of technical and graphical improvements. Additionally, a free standalone version of GTA Online will be exclusive to PS5 for the first three months.
Take-Two also updated its sales figures for a number of key games. Red Dead Redemption 2 has now sold 32 million copies, while NBA 2K20 is up to 14 million copies. Borderlands 3 has now reached 10.5 million units sold, while The Outer Worlds has sold 2.8 million copies.
One game that did not perform so well was Disintegration, the new game from Halo veteran Marcus Lehto. Management said it underperformed in the market, but the company did not announce any hard sales data for the title.
Take-Two:
Private Division’s Disintegration showed “under-performance” in Q1 2021.
(No sales specifics at all. I can’t imagine expectations were high, so this is tough news. Didn’t make much noise at launch. Can’t imagine it has a large player base.)
The uptick in sales for Take-Two amid the pandemic is not exclusive to the company. Xbox recently reported impressive numbers, while Capcom also recently announced that it had its highest-ever revenue and profit in the company’s 41-year history. PlayStation company Sony is the next big gaming company to announce earnings–you can expect them on August 4.
Chances are, if you’re watching Umbrella Academy Season 2, then you’ve finished Season 1 and you already know what you’re in for. Netflix’s surreal family drama slash sci-fi superhero action thriller planted its flag in the ground last year with a charming and fresh 10-episode debut that took the comic book source material by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba and made it into something totally new. It was exciting and weird and populated with characters that felt just familiar enough to love at first sight. Now, they’re all returning for a new adventure–or, well, a sort-of new adventure.
The set up for Season 2 will sound familiar. In a slap-dash attempt to avoid the apocalypse, the dysfunctional Hargreeves family–seven adopted super-powered siblings–wound up time traveling back to the 1960s. This may have mitigated the problem of the world ending back in the modern era–or at least put that problem on hold for the time being–but naturally, hopping back to the past just caused more issues than it solved. Specifically, their meddling set off a chain of events that led to a new, completely different apocalypse that they now have to try and avoid.
On the surface, it may seem like an easy way to repeat everything about Season 1 with a period piece setting–but thankfully, Umbrella Academy deftly maneuvers around falling into any sort of routine by actually allowing its characters to grow and change. The situation may be a familiar one, but the Hargreeves siblings are no longer the people they were back when they tried to save the world the first time. It wouldn’t be totally accurate to say that Umbrella Academy is ever “grounded”–one of the lesser antagonists this season is a sentient goldfish who smokes cigarettes by sucking up smoke-filled air bubbles in his tank–but the characters themselves feel authentic and flawed (maybe even a little too flawed at times–but we’ll get to that in a second).
Their new temporal circumstances have forced the Hargreeves siblings to adapt. Luther (Tom Hopper) has found work for himself as an underground boxer where he mostly throws fights and gets himself punched in the face. Diego (David Castañeda) has, regrettably, found himself locked up in a mental institution. Klaus (Robert Sheehan), and by extension his ghost brother Ben (Justin H.), have started a cult. Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) has become a civil rights activist. Vanya (Ellen Page) is stricken with amnesia and has settled in as a nanny in a farmhouse. Five (Aidan Gallagher), who is no stranger to time-traveling insanity, is once again forced to be the one responsible for informing his brothers and sisters of the oncoming apocalypse.
Each Hargreeves sibling’s new lot in life feels earned and logical, considering the trajectories of their individual arcs back in Season 1. The unfortunate side of that, however, is just how long it keeps the seven of them apart. Umbrella Academy is strongest when it allows the entire family to act as an ensemble and Season 2 spends the bulk of its time early on just trying to get them all in the same room with one another. The effect can be a bit frustrating, especially when the more stubborn members of the bunch really dig their heels in and refuse to play nice with others over and over again. It’s easy to tell that there was real consideration given to making sure each of the siblings had their own unique story, which is certainly well intentioned, but the reality is that a ten-episode season fitting seven individual plotlines in with any degree of balance is an impossible task.
Thankfully, by the time they do wind up all coming together toward the back half of the season, it’s immensely satisfying. For all you’ll probably want to reach through the screen and throttle one or two of them for their horrible decision making (I’m looking at you, Klaus, and also you, Diego–two names that will surprise no one after their respective Season 1 ordeals), watching the team congeal into a well-oiled machine is a blast.
In addition to (slowly but surely) getting the band back together, Umbrella Academy Season 2 added a handful of new faces with two major standouts amongst them: Lila (Ritu Arya) and Sissy (Marin Ireland). The two women represent the extremes of Umbrella Academy’s emotional and tonal range, with Lila crashing into the Hargreeves’ siblings lives with all the grace and subtlety of a hand grenade and Sissy acting as a quiet, deeply intimate foil for Vanya in her new life down on the range. To explain too much about either would edge into spoiler territory, but trust us when we say you’ll want to keep an eye on both of them.
All told, Umbrella Academy Season 2 manages to thread the needle in a way fans will appreciate. It’s enough of the same to feel comfortable and familiar while bringing enough of the new to the table to remain exciting and engaging. It may take its time getting off the ground and struggle with some early pacing issues, but at the end of the day its massive heart and lovable characters will sell you on even the clumsy pieces. After all, what is Umbrella Academy if not a love letter to the slightly (or, in some cases, extremely) dysfunctional?