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Electronic Arts recently paid $2.1 billion to acquire prolific mobile game developer GluMobile, which makes Kim Kardashian’s mobile game and so many others, and now EA’s CEO has shed some additional light on the purchase.

Speaking to GI.biz, Andrew Wilson said EA bought Glu because his company wants to grow, and mobile is the way to do that. EA also wants to make more money from microtransactions and live services and this is the bread and butter of Glu. Mobile is also bigger than console and PC, which is why EA is pushing to invest more.

“Mobile is the biggest platform in gaming today, and we’re committed to growth,” Wilson said. “We have great confidence in our existing live services and new mobile games in development, and with Glu we have an opportunity to bring together teams with complementary product portfolios and capabilities that will lead to even more great games.”

With the acquisition of Glu, EA gets to tap into an even bigger market on mobile through genres like sports and lifestyle, while Glu will help EA reach additional international markets. “We know there are exciting opportunities ahead in mobile, and we want to be in a position to lead,” Wilson said.

EA already operates a big and successful mobile game division. Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes in particular is a bright spot, generating $1 billion from microtransaction sales to date.

Mobile is so important to EA that the company paid a 36% premium on Glu’s share price to acquire the company. With the acquisition, EA is taking on Glu’s 800 employees, 500 of which are game developers. A spokesperson for EA confirmed to GI.biz that there are no plans to shut down any of Glu’s games or make any layoffs due to the acquisition.

“This deal was not about cost efficiencies. We’re excited to add these teams to our organization,” the spokesperson said.

Glu is just the latest high-profile acquisition from EA, as the publisher recently paid more than $1 billion to acquire the racing game developer Codemasters. Thanks to this buyout, EA expects to be able to release new racing games on an annual basis going forward.

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The Powerpuff Girls live-action reboot show has been given a pilot order by The CW. The new version of the much-loved animated series about a team of young superhero crimefighters had been in development since last year.

The news arrives via The Hollywood Reporter. In this live-action updating of The Powerpuff Girls, the main characters Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup will be portrayed as “disillusioned twentysomethings who resent having lost their childhood to crime fighting,” who reunite to help save the world.

The series has been developed by writer/producer Diablo Cody (Juno, Jennifer’s Body) and Heather Regnier (Sleepy Hollow). There’s no word on casting so far, and of course, a pilot isn’t a guarantee that The CW will follow through with a full series order.

The Powerpuff Girls was originally created by animator Craig McCracken for Cartoon Network. It ran for six seasons between 1998 and 2005. There was also a feature-length animated movie released in 2002, and three specials. In 2016, the show was rebooted by Cartoon Network, and to date there have been three seasons.

The Powerpuff Girls is one of several new pilots and shows that The CW has greenlit this week. The network has given a full series order to a remake of the cult sci-fi show The 4400. The original series ran from 200 to 2007 and focused on the return of 4,400 people who mysteriously disappeared over the course of several decades. THR states that the remake show will follow the same basic storyline and will be written by Riverdale’s Ariana Jackson.

The CW has also greenlit a pilot for Naomi, an adaptation of the DC comic book about superpowered teen Naomi McDuffie, which will be produced by Ana DuVernay (A Wrinkle in Time) and Jill Blankenship (Arrow).

Sega’s famed blue hedgehog is getting another movie. The aptly-named Sonic the Hedgehog 2 movie is coming to theaters on April 8, 2022, and the Sonic Twitter account posted a short video online to promote the movie and show off the new logo.

In the quick, 10-second clip below, we get our first look at the new logo for the movie. And of course, the first thing anyone would focus on is that the two looks like Tails’ tails. Sure, Sonic’s hair outline is there two, but we all want more Tails in our lives.

For those who saw the original Sonic movie, Tails appeared in the end credits sequence, as he warped to Earth, on the lookout for Sonic. Fans of the video game series are probably very excited to see where this movie franchise will head next.

Sonic 2 will begin shooting in March, something actress Tika Sumpter recently revealed. Sumpter played Maddie in the first film and will reprise her role for the sequel. Filming will take place in Canada and will hopefully wrap by May.

The first Sonic The Hedgehog movie was released in February 2020, right before the pandemic shut down the world. Globally, the film made $319 million globally, with $148 million coming domestically.

The Sonic movie was well-loved here at GameSpot. In his Sonic movie review, Phil Hornshaw said, “As video game adaptations go, Sonic the Hedgehog is among the stronger ones. It’s smart enough to stand on its own, making use of longstanding aspects of Sega’s supersonic mascot and his franchise, while making sure that what really shines through are its characters.”

Epic Games has revealed MetaHuman Creator, a tool for creating 3D digital humans that you can use right in your web browser. It has several possible applications, including games or animation, and the quickly created faces it generates are just stunning.

“Up until now one of the most arduous tasks in 3D content creation has been constructing truly convincing digital humans,” Epic Games VP of digital humans technology Vladimir Mastilovic said in a press release. “Even the most experienced artists require significant amounts of time, effort, and equipment, just for one character.”

Via MetaHuman Creator, the time it takes to put together a 3D character is supposedly cut from weeks or months down to less than an hour. The app also makes it easier for developers to create a multitude of different characters, which should come in handy when crafting character-driven experiences for the latest generation of consoles, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. The app’s creations have currently been tested for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PS4–they run on mobile too, though visual quality isn’t as high as what you get on consoles.

“It’s primarily about democratization, we want it to transform industry, people couldn’t [do these kind of] things because of budgets, but now single storytellers can do it,” Mastilovic told GameSpot in an interview. “New kinds of stories can be told now.”

So far, our favorite part of the app is the feature to quickly apply a variety of hair styles to a character, including more diverse styles that better fit people of color. MetaHuman Creator also includes 18 different body types and several clothing options, which should assist in the creation of more diverse characters.

“[MetaHuman Creator] is a game, the goal of the game is to make a character–the standalone version is tough as it feeds off a database that is non-shippable,” Mastilovic told GameSpot. “It is accessible through Pixel Streaming though; [we] can totally imagine influencers creating avatars and movies with [their] own character.”

The app won’t allow for children and teenager characters at first–Epic Games has run into difficulties with scanning in features from younger individuals. And as realistic-looking as the 3D models are, MetaHuman Creator is not designed to create stand-ins for real people.

“The characters look amazing [and have] fantastic animation, but are they ready for the big screen? Will they be able to digitally replace Luke Skywalker?” Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri said while talking to GameSpot. “No, [the app isn’t] quite ready for that yet.”

In May 2020, Epic Games unveiled Unreal Engine 5, the latest version of its game-making technology, running on PS5. Unreal 5 promises to deliver photorealistic graphics–Epic has already confirmed that Fortnite will transition to Unreal 5 in 2021, and developer inXile Entertainment is planning to use the new engine in its next game.

Actor Tom Holland has described the physical pain he endured filming the action scenes for the Uncharted movie, and it sounds intense.

“I was getting so beat,” he told Esquire. “I was battered and bruised, and I had tendinitis in my hamstring. I will never do a sword-fight scene ever again.”

This is not the first time the Spider-Man actor has discussed the Uncharted movie’s action scenes, as he previously said the film contains some of the “biggest action sequences I’ve ever been a part of.” That’s a big thing to say, as Holland has appeared in multiple Spider-Man and Avengers movies over the years.

While his experience filming the Uncharted movie was intense and gruelling, Holland took just three days off after he finished filming Uncharted in Berlin before heading to Atlanta, Georgia to shoot the next Spider-Man movie, he told Esquire.

Also in the interview, Holland said he really liked the haircut that the Uncharted movie hairstylists gave him. He liked it so much that he asked the Spider-Man wig department to give him a special wig so he didn’t have to cut his hair.

“My hair in Uncharted is much cooler,” he said. “I have cool shaved sides and it’s slick at the back, and that’s not very Peter Parker. He’s a bit of a loser. So they put this wig on me that was just around the sides.”

“For the first time in my life, I put my foot down as the leading actor and was like, ‘I’m not f***ing wearing that wig. You can just . . . I’m going to have shorter hair and you’re going to have to deal with it.”

The Uncharted movie has been in various stages of development hell for more than 10 years already, but the film is finally finished and is scheduled to release in February 2022. In addition to Holland, Oscar-nominated actor Mark Wahlberg plays Drake’s mentor, Sully, while Antonio Banderas will appear in an unspecified role. Zombieland and Venom director Ruben Fleischer directed the Uncharted movie off a script written by the Iron Man writing team of Matt Holloway and Art Marcum.

Holland’s next movie is Cherry for Apple TV+, in which he plays a former soldier who robs banks to get money to pay for his drug addiction.

Ubisoft wants to be less reliant on AAA tentpole releases in the future and envisions a business model that also allows for free-to-play games to be major part of its release catalog. In an earnings call this week following the release of the company’s Q3 financial results, CFO Frederick Duguet spoke about expanding its operations beyond the scope of the traditional AAA video game release and more towards other “premium” services.

“We said for a number of years that our normal template is to come with either three or four AAA games, so we’ll stick to that plan for fiscal 2022,” Duguet said via IGN. “But we see that we are progressively, continuously moving from a model that used to be only focused on AAA releases to a model where we have a combination of strong releases from AAA and strong back catalog dynamics, but also complementing our program of new releases with free-to-play and other premium experiences.”

Ubisoft has been dabbling in this space recently, as it launched free-to-play battle royale Hyper Scape last year. Boasting some unique ideas that allowed audiences to have a direct impact on how a match plays, Hyper Scape flopped not long after launch and is currently being overhauled.

One upcoming game that the company has in development for the Chinese market, alongside investor Tencent, is the previously-announced Assassin’s Creed mobile game in Ubisoft’s efforts to focus more on free-to-play games in the mobile space.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot also briefly mentioned the company’s back catalog of games, adding that Ubisoft’s library continues to be profitable after launch and will likely still be a key part of its success. Rainbow Six Siege was a positive example, as the team-based action game managed to add 15 million new players in 2020 and continues to be a big driver of revenue for Ubisoft.

“We are continuing to move toward an increasingly pronounced recurrence of our revenues on the back of growing audiences,” Guillemot said. “Therefore, we expect our highly-profitable back catalog to account for an even larger share of our business going forward.”

Ubisoft’s AAA games still performed brilliantly in 2020, as the company said that it had a “record number” of unique players across all of its games during the quarter. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla hit a new franchise revenue record, Just Dance 2021 rose “sharply” when compared to the previous year’s game, and Brawlhalla, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Far Cry 5, The Crew 2, and Anno 1800 all helped Ubisoft pull in more than $1.2 billion in revenue during the holiday period.

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Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney are now the proud owners of a UK football team. The Deadpool star and It’s Always Sunny creator have officially been given approval by the UK government to buy the local club Wrexham, according to Deadline.

Reynolds and McElhenney bought the lower-tier club because they saw potential in its future growth. Wrexham director Spencer Harris said, “They’re really interested in taking something with real potential, which this club has, investing in it, molding it, and watching it grow.”

In a statement, Wrexham confirmed that Reynolds and McElhenney made a£2 million equity investment in the club as part of the buyout. £50,000 of that will go toward helping expand the women’s football program.

“It is a special day for the two of us to become the latest stewards in the long and storied history of Wrexham AFC,” Reynolds and McElhenney said in a joint statement. “Together with the players, the staff, the fans, and the local community, we can now pursue our goal to grow the team and return it to the EFL in front of increased attendances, and in an improved stadium, while making a positive difference to the wider community in Wrexham.”

In a further bid for synergy, Reynolds’ gin company, Aviation Gin, recently made a deal with Wrexham for the booze to become an official partner to the club.

Both Reynolds and McElhenney changed their Twitter handles to “Wryan Reynolds” and “Wrob McElhenney” to promote and celebrate the deal going through. You can see their silly tweets below.

Both Reynolds and McElhenney have video game-adjacent projects, as Reynolds will appear in the video game movie Free Guy while McElhenney stars on the video game TV show Mythic Quest. McElhenney was also lined up to direct the Minecraft movie before he dropped out.