Microsoft has officially confirmed the existence and price of the Xbox Series S, a budget-conscious option of its next-gen hardware. With that, attention turns toward Xbox Series X, which still has no announced price or release date. But a leak regarding the Series S made claims about its big brother Series X too.
Windows Central confirmed leaks of the Series S design–a slimmer white box with a circular black design element–along with accurately calling its price at $299. That would appear to lend credence to the rest of its report, which claimed the Series X will be priced at $499 and that both systems will release on November 10.
We know that Series X is scheduled for a November launch, but the exact date and price are still unconfirmed. The Series S confirmation from Microsoft didn’t announce a date. The company promised more details soon.
👀 Let’s make it official! Xbox Series S | Next-gen performance in the ˢᵐᵃˡˡᵉˢᵗ Xbox ever. $299 (ERP). Looking forward to sharing more! Soon. Promise. pic.twitter.com/8wIEpLPVEq
The Series S has been something of an open secret for a while, though. In August, a controller leak mentioned the long-rumored Series S specifically.
Meanwhile, Sony’s PlayStation 5, which is going head-to-head with Xbox this holiday season, also has no announced price or release date. Sony did start to lay the groundwork for an announcement, though, by allowing fans to register for a chance to reserve their preorder.
Franchise spinoff Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory will be launching on consoles this November–including Nintendo Switch. While the rhythm-action game will be the first time a Kingdom Hearts title has been available on the Switch, it will also most likely be the last.
In an interview with Nintendo Enthusiast, Square Enix’s Tetsuya Nomura confirmed that there were currently no plans for any other Kingdom Hearts games for the Switch, including ports of existing games or brand new ones.
Square Enix did apparently look at porting some of its existing games to the Nintendo console, but found it too difficult–meaning it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever see any of the main Kingdom Hearts trilogy on Switch.
The one bit of good news for Square Enix fans is that Nomura did express his interest in the Switch as an interesting piece of hardware, saying that he always wanted to develop something for the unique console. He also told Nintendo Enthusiast that it’s possible other games of his could come to the Switch.
Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory will be out on November 11 for the Nintendo Switch, as well as the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The spinoff turns Kingdom Hearts’ signature battle style into a rhythm game, with players attacking enemies on the beat in order to advance. It allows players to unlock notable cutscenes from the main games, meaning Switch players will be able to experience some of the essence of Kingdom Hearts despite the radically different play style.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has given an in-depth interview to Variety in which he speaks about why Netflix’s business model is best suited without ads, if the company might ever get into gaming, and the employee who was reimbursed $100,000 before leaving the company.
Regarding ads, Hastings said it’s not a hard and fast rule that Netflix wants to avoid ads, but it just makes business sense to build the platform on a paid model versus ads.
“It’s definitely not a rule. It’s a judgment call… It’s a belief we can build a better business, a more valuable business [without advertising],” he said. “You know, advertising looks easy until you get in it. Then you realize you have to rip that revenue away from other places because the total ad market isn’t growing, and in fact right now it’s shrinking. It’s hand-to-hand combat to get people to spend less on, you know, ABC and to spend more on Netflix.”
The consumer market is growing more substantially than the ad market, and Netflix’s earnings results over the past two decades demonstrate that, Hastings said. “We went public 20 years ago at about a dollar a share, and now we’re [more than] $500. So I would say our subscription-focused strategy’s worked pretty well. But it’s basically what we think is the best capitalism, as opposed to a philosophical thing.”
Also in the interview, Hastings was asked if Netflix would ever get into live programming around sports and news. Live news programming probably won’t happen, but Hastings said other categories like sports and video games might be more realistic.
“I doubt news, but sports, video gaming, user-generated content–if you think of the other big categories, someday it could make sense,” he said.
It’s not completely clear here if Hastings is speaking about producing TV shows or movies around video games, or if Netflix could get into game development, or something else entirely. Netflix recently released the well-received video game documentary, High Score.
Also in the interview, Hastings touched on Netflix’s unique corporate expense program where employees do not need to have their expenses approved beforehand. An employee from the Taiwan branch expensed $100,000 for personal vacations, before being let go. Hastings said the $100,000 was “not that dramatic” in the scheme of things. The unique program is meant to help employees feel trusted, and in turn the quality of their work may improve.
While it’s looking like the first of the Avatar sequels won’t be arriving until at least 2022, the franchise’s Twitter account continues to drop behind the scenes peeks at the mammoth production. The latest is a series of photos from a trip the cast took to Hawaii to prepare for filming–which, knowing the schedule of Avatar 2, are probably at least 3 years old.
The purpose of the Hawaii trip was for the cast of the sequel to “experience the underwater world” that Avatar 2 will be exploring, and the pictures include Sigourney Weaver post-dive, a trio of actors playing new characters, and the entire Sully family including Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, and the actors who play their characters’ children.
ICYMI: Avatar Producer @JonLandau shared a series of photos from behind-the-scenes of the sequels. To prepare the cast of the Avatar sequels for filming, we took them to Hawaii to experience the underwater world. Check out a few pictures from the trip here: pic.twitter.com/AdXhFhWPlh
Considering Avatar started filming in 2017, and had already wrapped up performance capture filming by late 2018, it’s likely that these photos are from 2017 or even earlier. The photo of Worthington and Saldana with their screen family is listed as the first time the Sully family was all together–though the photo seems to include Jack Champion, who plays an unrelated human character, and is missing Trinity Bliss, who will play Jake and Neytiri’s daughter.
Congratulations to @JackTheChamp on completing his last live action shot on Avatar 2! What a difference a few years makes. ICYMI: Jack will play Spider, a human teenager who was born at Hell’s Gate, but prefers to spend his time in the Pandoran rainforest. pic.twitter.com/h9uxsbN9UW
The second photo includes actors Bailey Bass, Cliff Curtis, and Filip Geljo, who will play Na’vi from the newly introduced seaside-dwelling Metkayina clan. It’s still unknown what role Sigourney Weaver will be playing in the sequel, after her character Grace was killed off in the first film.
The original Avatar film also included a preliminary trip to the jungles of Hawaii, as described by lead actor Sam Worthington at the time: “we had to wear tails and ears and a flimsy g-string and run around basically half-naked, pretending to be our characters.” Luckily the latest Hawaii shoot doesn’t seem to have involved as many flimsy g-strings.
The latest news on the Avatar sequels was an announcement from James Cameron that Avatar 2 would not make its planned December 2021 release date, though no new release window has been announced.
[UPDATE] Microsoft has made the Xbox Series S official. The system will cost $299, and it looks just like the leaked image. Xbox UK has also confirmed that the system will cost £250 there.
👀 Let’s make it official! Xbox Series S | Next-gen performance in the ˢᵐᵃˡˡᵉˢᵗ Xbox ever. $299 (ERP). Looking forward to sharing more! Soon. Promise. pic.twitter.com/8wIEpLPVEq
The release date has not been officially confirmed by Microsoft yet, though.
The original story follows.
The Xbox Series S has seemingly been revealed, and while it’s still unconfirmed, reports are coming in from a reporter with a solid track record. Furthermore, details of the Xbox next-gen release–including prices and a date–have also reportedly leaked.
Thurrott reporter Brad Sams has unveiled the design below, showing what the Xbox Series S will reportedly look like. Whether or not this is the actual final design remains to be seen, as Microsoft has not officially unveiled the Series S (or even, technically, announced it), but industry insider Daniel Ahmad has backed up the report, saying this is the design we should expect.
It appears to be a lot smaller, and will not feature a disc drive.
As for the price and date, Windows Central is reporting that Microsoft is set to hold a press conference soon formally announcing the Series S, as well as these details. The site reports that both the Series S and Series X will launch on November 20; the series S will cost $299 USD, and the Series X will cost $499 USD.
The piece also reports that the consoles will be available through Xbox’s All Access subscription service, with the Series S being set at $25 USD a month and the Series X at $35 USD a month. Phil Spencer has previously said that All Access is “critical” to their next-gen strategy.
We’re still waiting on official confirmation on all of this, but with November approaching, we’d expect it soon.
Xbox Series S’ specs have seemingly leaked through a trailer, saying that the console will feature a 512GB SSD, run games at 1440p up to 120 frames per second, and will support raytracing.
The trailer also shows how the console is 60% smaller than Xbox Series X, and explains that its SSD uses the same Velocity Architecture as Xbox Series X’s equivalent – which should mean short load times and seamless game switching.
Despite all of the new information today, we still don’t know how to pre-order an Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, but Xbox says we’ll hear more “soon” – so we’ll hopefully learn about that in the not-too-distant future.
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].
While the COVID-19 pandemic has seen many companies, including Netflix, transition to allowing employees to work from home full time, Netflix founder Reed Hastings isn’t a fan. While Netflix’s work from home arrangements will continue as long as necessary to keep its employees safe from COVID-19, Hastings has said he sees no benefit to the practice.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Hastings was asked whether he saw any positives to staff working from home. “No. I don’t see any positives,” he said, “Not being able to get together in person, particularly internationally, is a pure negative.” Despite this, he predicted that most employees would continue to work at least one day from home even after the pandemic ended.
Netflix has almost 20 offices around the globe, not including the locations where Netflix-led productions are shot. On the topic of those productions, Hastings indicated that they were “up and running in much of Europe and much of Asia,” with a few productions starting up in Los Angeles as well. “The hope is that, through September and October, we can really get – with proper testing – a lot more running,” he said.
Every detail we’ve seen out of Cyberpunk 2077 so far has hammered in how massive it will be, and this behind-the-scenes look at the voice recording for the Chinese localization is no different. A sneak peek says the voice work includes 15%-20% more lines than The Witcher 3 did–including both of its huge DLC add-ons.
The statistics were tweeted by video game analyst Daniel Ahmad, along with a photo of some of the cast in the recording studio. The Chinese localization alone required “more than 150 voice actors, 100,000 lines, 4 recording studios, and 10,000 person hours,” according to Ahmad.
Some pictures from the Cyberpunk 2077 Chinese localisation recording sessions. The dubbing is in Mandarin Chinese. More than 150 voice actors, 100,000 lines, 4 recording studios + 10,000 person hours. The VA work is 15-20% more than Witcher 3 (incl DLC). pic.twitter.com/g5NG7Vs9Wo
Interestingly, Cyberpunk 2077 won’t actually get an official release in China’s notoriously strict entertainment market, but will still be available to Chinese players through Steam. According to Ahmad, CD Projekt Red has a good reputation among players in China, and at one point it was even the top market for pre-orders of the upcoming game. You can check out what Cyberpunk sounds like in Mandarin Chinese in the demo footage below:
Ahmad has previously tracked CDPR’s popularity in China, noting its huge presence on Bilibili, a Chinese social media site with similarities to Twitch and YouTube.
Here is something fairly notable. CDPR has 228k Youtube subs and 281k Twitch followers. Yet it has 568k followers on Chinese video site Bilibili which can be considered a Chinese ver. of Youtube/Twitch. CDPR has a good reputation in China and is a well respected dev. pic.twitter.com/SNPDuBPsWH
Cyberpunk 2077 will launch with full voice acting in 10 different languages, a huge undertaking for a game of this size. An additional eight languages will be available in subtitles. The full list includes:
1993’s Doom has been ported to just about every device under the sun since its release, from calculators to printers to train ticket authenticators. There’s even a subreddit for funny Doom ports. But there’s been one version of Doom we’ve long cried out for, and it’s finally here–a version of Doom that will run on a slightly modified pregnancy test.
Twitter user Foone, who identifies as a “hardware / software necromancer” in their profile, has been playing around with a modified pregnancy test with a replacement OLED display. At first, he was just using it to run videos, like this one from the opening of Skyrim.
At first, Foone was struggling to get Doom running on the test, but eventually, they made it happen. Using a mini keyboard, Foone was able to control the black-and-white, low-fi version of Doom, running on a 128×32 monochrome display.
We’re excited to announce that we’re expecting (you to enjoy the videos below).
Yesterday I had a lot of retweets and reddit posts and such for playing Doom on a pregnancy test. But as I explained then, it wasn’t really PLAYING on a pregnancy test, it was just a video being played back, not an interactive game. Well, now it is. It’s Pregnancy Test Doom! pic.twitter.com/Nrjyq07EVv
I tried zooming in and turning up the in-game gamma a bit, so you can see what’s going on slightly better. (It’s a 128×32 pixel monochrome display, it’s never gonna be great) pic.twitter.com/dAU7LZ1pkT
It’s maybe not the most easy-to-play version of Doom, but it’s certainly impressive.
Another exciting Doom port that has been in the works is a version for the Playdate, which makes use of the hand crank. If you want the real best version of Doom, though, the current PC/console version keeps improving.
Codemasters’ racing game Dirt 5 has been delayed to November 6 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The developer confirmed the move on Twitter, acknowledging that this news “sucks.”
The delay isn’t the longest one, as Dirt 5 was originally slated for release on October 16. “It sucks, we know,” Codemasters said of the new delay. “The start line is now a little further away, but it’s still very much in sight.”
News: DIRT 5 will now launch on November 6 for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. #XboxSeriesX and #PS5 versions still launching later this year. Our road trip just got a little bit longer. Thank you for being part of the journey with us. 🖐️ ❤️ pic.twitter.com/p5c8MDUfKo
Codemasters also re-affirmed that Dirt 5 remains on schedule to release on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in 2020, though the exact release date for the game (and the consoles) remains a mystery. The Google Stadia edition of Dirt 5 will release in early 2021.
The studio also reminded fans that people who buy Dirt 5 for PS4 or Xbox One can get a free upgrade to a “next-gen optimized” version of the game for PS5 or Xbox Series X when those consoles release at no extra charge. Upgrades must be within the same console family. Another promo to note is that the more expensive Amplified Edition of Dirt 5 unlocks on November 3, which is three days before the public release date.
Between now and launch in November, Codemasters will release more news and gameplay, including the debut of new cars and locations, as well as the full car list. Codemasters also plans to discuss more of the PS5 and Xbox Series X features for the game, along with more multiplayer details, in the time ahead.
GameSpot has gone hands-on with Dirt 5, and Michael Higham had some thoughts on its new approach. “With Dirt 5, the series isn’t all about rally racing anymore; instead, it’s embracing the chaos of off-roading, and at least that’s still staying true to its name,” he wrote.
The game will feature Troy Baker (Joel in The Last of Us) as Alex Janicek, the mentor to the player character, and Nolan North (Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series) as Bruno Durand, Janicek’s rival.