NHL 21 was nowhere to be seen at EA Play Live in June, but it seems the game may finally be getting close to its proper reveal. The game’s community manager said in a July 17-dated tweet that a an “update” on NHL 21 is coming sometime this week.
EA not announcing NHL 21 at EA Play was no surprise given that the company historically focuses on FIFA and Madden in June before announcing the year’s new NHL game later on.
The real-world NHL season will resume on August 1, and hockey fans are in for a treat. Instead of playing out the rest of the regular season, the NHL is picking up with the playoffs. An expanded roster of 24 teams will compete, and there will be five or six games per day at the beginning.
NHL 21 is expected to release on PS4 and Xbox One, while the game will also presumably be playable on PS5 and Xbox Series X through backwards compatibility. EA’s Madden NFL 21 has a “Dual Entitlement” program where you can receive a free upgrade to the PS5/Xbox Series X edition of the game, but no such program has been announced for NHL 21 as of yet.
Jurassic World: Domination has returned to filming, after the shoot stopped in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The UK set, which has had over $5 million spent on making it safe, is now housing actors Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt, and a returning trio from the original. And now we have photos showing that filming has started–and Howard is amassing bruises.
Howard, who has played the character Claire in the last two Jurassic World movies, posted a “Throwback Thursday” photo of herself and co-star Chris Pratt, both of whom have been isolating together in the UK for weeks ahead of the shoot.
Pratt prompted Howard, via Twitter, to post photos of some of the bruises she’s gotten doing stunt work. It’s unclear whether these are also “throwback” photos, but the tweet text indicates pretty clearly that she’s performing own stunts again right now.
Howard has previously talked about the precautions being taken on set to ensure that everyone is safe from the pandemic. “We would never go back to work if we didn’t feel safe,” she said in June. “And, you know, we’re taking it a day at a time and I’m very grateful to have a job.”
After drip-feeding the initial Madden NFL 21 player ratings–including all five 99-rated players–EA Sports has now released the player ratings for every single athlete in the game.
You can search through this database on EA’s website to see how your favorite players stack up against the competition. There are more than 2,300 entries on the site, and there are filters for team, position, division, and more. The widget also lets you compare player ratings on the fly.
As usual, these are the “launch” ratings, and these numbers will change regularly throughout the season depending on how the players perform on the field.
There is a new level of uncertainty around the NFL this year due to COVID-19. With just weeks to go before the NFL pre-season is set to kick off in August, the NFL and the players’ union have not agreed to a return-to-work plan that includes new health and safety measures. Despite that, the 2020-2021 NFL season is expected to begin in early September.
Madden NFL 21’s five 99-rated players include Aaron Donald, Christian McCaffrey, Michael Thomas, Patrick Mahomes, and Stephon Gilmore.
In other news, EA Sports has confirmed that it’s making a last-minute change to Madden NFL 21 to remove the Washington Redskins after the real-world sports team dropped the name that was widely criticized for being racist. The game will be updated with a generic Washington team and logo until the actual sports group decides on and announces a new name.
Madden NFL 21 is coming on August 28 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. It will also be coming to the next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X, with free upgrades for current-gen owners through EA’s Dual Entitlement program. For more details, check out our Madden NFL 21 pre-order guide.
Dead By Daylight is getting a big update for the console versions soon, and it will add cross-play and progression to the game, as well as letting you access your full list of friends who are playing the game across different systems.
In an update on the game’s site, the development team has detailed how all of this will work. The game, which already features cross-play between the Steam and Windows 10 versions, and after extensive testing the game’s team is planning on expanding out further.
Cross-play and friends lists are coming to the Switch, PS4, and Xbox One versions of the games, allowing them to play with friends on other consoles or on the PC version. A specific date has not been set, but it’s “coming really soon,” the post says. The team will continue to monitor the situation once the update is live to make sure that the game is balanced and fair. Players will also be able to opt-out if they want to.
The upcoming Stadia version is not part of this line-up, but it will be receiving cross-progression. The first rollout of cross-progression will target the Stadia, PC, and Switch versions in September, and players “will be able to share their progression, purchases, and inventory.” Making this possible was pretty complicated, the post explains, so players will need to create a new “Behaviour Account” to merge their progression between systems.
The post also addresses the mobile version of the game, and says that making it part of their cross-play agenda is not on the cards for now. “The game system and architecture are significantly different,” the post explains. “We are prioritizing the release of cross-play between PC & Consoles first to make sure that the experience is smooth for the players on those platforms.”
Mondo, the American art company that makes collectibles, posters, apparel, and more, has teased a collaboration with Microsoft for Halo Infinite.
Mondo will make some kind of Halo Infinite announcement on July 24 as part of the virtual San Diego Comic-Con, known as Comic-Con At Home. July 24 is one day after the July 23 Xbox Series X showcase where Microsoft will show more of Halo Infinite’s campaign.
There is no word on what Mondo might be creating for Halo Infinite, but the company is well known for selling very stylish posters for The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, among others. Mondo has worked with numerous big-name pop culture franchises over the years, and Halo is just the latest.
No Man’s Sky, the huge open-universe exploration game that has continued to expand since release, recently came to Xbox Game Pass. It’s been a bit over a month since the game joined the service, and according to programmer Sean Murray it’s led to a huge increase in players.
“Last month we welcomed over a million new players into No Man’s Sky by virtue of Xbox Game Pass and the Windows 10 release,” he writes. “This, together with our cross-play update, meant that we are seeing some of our biggest ever in-game numbers, all playing together regardless of their gaming platform.”
Murray calls this huge boost in players “genuinely humbling.”
We’ve reviewed No Man’s Sky three times as the game has received updates and improved, and its current iteration earned a 9/10. “The drastic improvements made to No Man’s Sky in its Beyond expansion are the new gold standard for how to gracefully cope with a game’s flaws post-release,” wrote reviewer Justin Clark.
Recently, 2K Sports announced that NBA 2K21 for PS5/Xbox Series X will cost $70 USD, which is a $10 price increase from the $60 USD that has been commonplace since the Xbox 360/PS3 era. Other publishers are expected to follow suit and raise prices for next-gen games, but the full picture has not yet become clear. Xbox boss Phil Spencer has now commented on the matter, telling The Washington Post that he sees no problem with the price increase. Gamers will ultimately vote with their wallets, after all.
“As an industry, we can price things whatever we want to price them, and the customer will decide what the right price is for them,” Spencer said. “I’m not negative on people setting a new price point for games because I know everybody’s going to drive their own decisions based on their own business needs. But gamers have more choice today than they ever have. In the end, I know the customer is in control of the price that they pay, and I trust that system.”
Spencer declined to say if Microsoft’s own new games will cost $70 USD, but the situation at Xbox is somewhat different. With Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft offers a subscription service that gets you all first-party Xbox games for around $10 USD per month.
Before the $10 price increase for NBA 2K21 was announced, PlayStation boss Shawn Layden spoke about how the current AAA games business is unsustainable.
“It’s been $59.99 since I started in this business, but the cost of games have gone up ten times,” Layden told GI.biz. “If you don’t have elasticity on the price-point, but you have huge volatility on the cost line, the model becomes more difficult. I think this generation is going to see those two imperatives collide.”
IDG Consulting’s Yoshio Osaki said that, despite increasing development costs, the price of games has not increased in the same way that something like a Netflix subscription has. “Even with the increase to $69.99 for next-gen, that price increase from 2005 to 2020 next-gen is only up 17%, far lower than the other comparisons,” he said. “While the cost of development and publishing have gone up, and pricing in other entertainment verticals has also gone up substantially, next-gen software pricing has not reflected these increases. $59.99 to $69.99 does not even cover these other cost increases completely, but does move it more in the proper direction.”
Osaki added that he believes other publishers are “exploring moving their next-gen pricing up on certain franchises.”
Since its 2005 debut to mixed reviews, Constantine, which cast Keanu Reeves as a demon hunter on a holy mission, has gained a cult following. The movie turned a small profit worldwide on a $100 million budget, and never got a follow-up. But the film’s director, Francis Lawrence, says that he’d still be keen–and so would Reeves.
Speaking to Slashfilm, Lawrence says that the whole team wanted to do a sequel, but it would have had to make some changes. “We wanted to make a responsible, more R-rated movie,” he says. “By responsible, I mean we’d make a movie that wouldn’t cost quite as much as the original, which we thought was going to be PG-13.”
Lawrence says that they worked on a sequel for a while, and says that the team has talked about it again recently. “Keanu, (producer Akiva Goldsman), and I have actually talked about it,” he says, clarifying that they talked “recently” about a sequel. But it’s complicated, as Constantine is a comic license that there might be other plans for.
“I don’t even remember who has it, but with all these shared universes that exist now, with Constantine being a part of Vertigo, which is a part of DC, people have plans for these shared universes,” he says. “You know, possibly different Constantines and things like that. Right now, we don’t have that character available to us for TV or movies, which is a bummer.”
“I think it’s kind of crazy when you have Keanu, who would love to do another Constantine, and us wanting to do another Constantine, and people are like, ‘Uh, no, we got other plans,'” Lawrence adds.
Lawrence has gone on to work with actor Jennifer Lawrence (no relation) multiple times, directing the last three Hunger Games movies, as well as Red Sparrow and a Dior ad. He also directed another cult classic for an iconic actor in 2007’s I Am Legend, starring Will Smith.
Keanu Reeves’ career has gone through a resurgence lately, partly because of excellent performances in the John Wick trilogy and amazing, self-aware cameos in Always Be My Maybe and Toy Story 4, and partly because of his reputation as the nicest guy in Hollywood. He’s also going to be all over Cyberpunk 2077.
Constantine got a game adaptation to Xbox and PS2–check out our original review if you’re interested.
Fans anticipating the perennially postponed Godzilla vs. Kong — the sequel to both Godzilla: King of Monsters and Kong: Skull Island — can now catch a glimpse of the movie via some sneak peek art spotted on the back of Playmates Toys’ figure packaging.
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.
