Microsoft has announced that it will be permanently closing all of its retail stores, while four physical locations in London, NYC, Sydney, and Redmond will be re-imagined as Microsoft Experience Centers.
Microsoft announced the news and said that “the company’s retail team members will continue to serve customers from Microsoft corporate facilities and remotely providing sales, training, and support.”
Microsoft has told The Verge that no layoffs will result from today’s decision. Microsoft closed its retail stores in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and had yet to re-open them.
Since then, there focus has obviously shifted to its digital storefronts on Microsoft.com and the stores on both Xbox and Windows PC, which “reach more than 1.2 billion people every month in 190 markets.”
“We deliberately built teams with unique backgrounds and skills that could serve customers from anywhere. The evolution of our workforce ensured we could continue to serve customers of all sizes when they needed us most, working remotely these last months,” Microsoft Corporate Vice Pesident David Porter said in a statement. “Speaking over 120 languages, their diversity reflects the many communities we serve. Our commitment to growing and developing careers from this talent pool is stronger than ever.”
Netflix has shared an inside peek at The Cuphead Show in a new video that offers fans a closer look at the show’s animation style.
The streaming giant invited fans to take a behind-the-scenes look at the “intricate, nostalgic design” of the animated series in a new teaser shared on Twitter. The short video showcases character concept art for Cuphead (Tru Valentino) and his brother Mugman (Frank Todaro), together with Fleischer-style scenes that have been created to tell the tale of Cuphead, who is described as a “lovable scamp.”
The show’s “ragtag tribe of enthusiastic artists and animators” provide an insightful commentary over the footage, with the team sharing details of everything involved in the creative process, from character creation and storyboarding to the role of the voice actors. The video concludes with another look at the official poster for the series, followed by a “coming soon” title card.
“Reimagining the Fleischer style with these incredibly relatable siblings is gonna be pretty fresh and new,” executive producer CJ Kettler promised in one clip, while art director Andrea Fernandez suggested that the show would “bring you back to the wonder of childhood.”
Similarly to its video game counterpart, The Cuphead Show will follow the unique misadventures of the world’s colourful characters through 1930s-style animation, however, it will not be a retelling of the game. The character-driven comedy will be hand-drawn, though not entirely to paper this time, and not by Studio MDHR themselves, but rather Netflix’s own in-house animation studio.
It’s ludicrously hot (read: a bit hot) in the UK right now, and it isn’t helping our general state of “melted” that all these exciting games are being shown off at the moment. This week, Jesse, Matt and Joe discuss the finer points of Cyberpunk 2077 after Night City Wire and a swather of previews. We also touch base on Marvel’s Avengers, which impressed us in its possibilities.
Alongside that, we’ve got thoughts on The Sinner, Snowpiercer and the Harley Quinn TV show, not to mention a new Endless Search favourite, and your excellent emails. Remember, if you want to get in touch with the podcast, please do: [email protected].
From the backyards of the American suburbs to a fantasy world where dwarves, fairies, and dragons are real, the new book Dwarf Story promises to take readers on a journey where homework and cell phones collide with a mystical turf war. Yeah, it must be Wednesday!
Written by Professor W.W. Marplot, Dwarf Story tells the tale of middle-school student Arty, who stumbles upon “an ax-swinging, bearded, sweaty warrior Dwarf.” Soon he and his friends realize that all manner of magical creatures has converged on their everyday lives, which of course leads to an adventure as the kids follow the clues in an attempt to figure out the mystery behind these critters. “And also,” the book’s logline reminds us, “whether you can give aspirin to Pixies.”
According to Waxing Gibbous Books, Professor Welkin Westicotter Marplot, of Coillemuir, Scotland, “is a collector of esoteric tales of global wisdom and curator of ancient manuscripts. He is a recluse and, as he claims, has been collecting and collating adventure and fantasy stories for over a century.”
Today we’ve got a free sample of Dwarf Story for you to check out. The book, which is available for pre-order now, will be released on June 30. Read on for the excerpt, and check out the cover below as well!
Every time the iPad line goes on sale, I recommend getting one. Earlier this year I bought the 32GB WiFi iPad and it is my favorite piece of tech now. I thought I’d look like a huge dork carting it around, but that’s true regardless of the tech I’m carrying. At some point I realized I spend most of my non-gaming tech time either reading or surfing the web, and rather than drop $500+ for a laptop, the $249 iPad does all that and so much more.
The newest iPads also work with Apple Pencil, so you don’t need to drop a grand to get a Pro Model if you’re interested in creating digital art. I recommend getting an Apple Pencil and the $10 Procreate app if you have any interest at all in drawing digitally.
Beyond art and web surfing, I use my iPad for reading comics. It’s awesome. The Marvel Unlimited and ComiXology Unlimited apps are great. In fact, you can still sign up for a 60-day ComiXology unlimited trial at no cost to you. If you have an iPad, or any device really, I recommend it.
“We are so immensely grateful to the millions of fans around the world that have played The Last of Us Part II and shared their experiences with us over the last week,” Druckmann said. “We set out to tell a new kind of story, one that deals with difficult themes and would challenge you in unexpected ways. Hearing how the experience has resonated with so many of you and witnessing the type of thoughtful discussions it has sparked has been so incredible. We’ve also been so inspired by your creativity — whether it’s your gorgeous Photo Mode shots, jaw-dropping gameplay GIFs, or the songs you’ve recorded using Ellie’s guitar. ”
“The Last of Us Part II was made possible thanks to the efforts of the hundreds of talented and passionate developers here at Naughty Dog. We can imagine no greater honor than seeing that same passion mirrored by the people playing it. Thank you for helping us reach this amazing milestone.”
Microsoft is releasing a new Xbox this year with the Xbox Series X, and while the graphics will indeed look better than current-gen games, the jump in visuals might not be as pronounced as before in the last console transition. Xbox boss Phil Spencer spoke about this during a Gamelab interview.
While the increase in visuals might not be as immediately identifiable with Xbox Series X compared to Xbox One, Spencer said next-generation games will feel more “immersive” thanks to the power of the Series X.
“I think we’re at a point now–with immersion, with the tools we have and the compute capability–that the deltas will be smaller from a visual impact, or that feature X was never possible before and now it is,” Spencer said, as reported by GI.biz. “And that might sound depressing to some, but what I would say is the advantage side of what I’m seeing now is really the immersive nature of the content that’s getting created.”
The Xbox Series X (and the PS5, for that matter) will use its expanded horsepower to improve load times and frame rates, Spencer said.
“We’re able to get to almost lifelike graphics today, even on current-gen in certain instances,” Spencer said. “But when you take that and you mix it with a very high frame rate, solid frame rate, very little latency in input, and the ability for game storytellers to really push the emotion and the story they’re trying to get through their game, through the screen, through the controller and into you? That is something I’m feeling in the games now that is a dramatic step up.”
Spencer said next-generation games that leverage this new technology will be capable of achieving “even more feeling and impact.”
The Xbox Series X releases this holiday with Halo Infinite as a launch title. Microsoft will release more details on Halo Infinite and the company’s other upcoming exclusives during an event in July.
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The Last of Us Part 2’s director, Neil Druckmann has made clear that there are ‘no plans’ for DLC after the game’s launch.
Speaking during a spoilercast for the game on the Kinda Funny Gamescast, Druckmann was asked about whether the new game would follow the original’s lead with a Left Behind-style story DLC.
“No, with Last of Us I think we had some season pass or something that said ahead of time we have some story DLC – no there’s no plans for that.”
This doesn’t discount a multiplayer take on the game, like The Last of Us’ Factions mode, as we’ve previously heard that that will be released as a standalone game of some kind.
The wording of the original announcement – which said “when and where it will be realized is still to be determined” – could suggest the mode will arrive on PS5.
We awarded The Last of Us Part 2 a full 10/10 review, and we called it “a masterpiece worthy of its predecessor”. If you’ve finished the game recently, both Podcast Beyond! and the IGN UK Podcast have recorded full spoilercasts on their feelings about the game.
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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].
The PC-exclusive ray-tracing effects coming to Cyberpunk 2077 have been revealed by Nvidia.
As part of the graphics card manufacturer’s technical partnership with CD Projekt Red, Nvidia is bringing four immersive ray-traced effects to Cyberpunk 2077, which will enhance the game’s performance and fine-tune its fidelity. You check out screenshots of the effects in action below:
These immersion-bolstering effects include Ray-Traced Diffuse Illumination, which “captures sky radiance” and emissive lighting to ensure that the sun and moon “realistically illuminate Night City.” The game will also feature Ray-Traced Reflections which as you might have guessed, make reflections more realistic in how they simulate the way light affects surfaces.
Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion will also affect the game’s shading tech on PC, further darkening objects with ambient lighting. Finally, Ray-Traced Shadows have allowed CD Projekt Red to bring “pixel-perfect shadows” to the game, as well as “directional shadows from sun and moon light” to further increase your immersion.
Cyberpunk 2077 will also utilise Nvidia’s DLSS 2.0 technology, an AI Rendering system that uses a deep learning neural network to boost frame rates “while generating beautiful, crisp game images,” which should in theory allow you to crank the settings on launch. Nvidia also revealed that the game will land on its cloud streaming service, GeForce NOW, at launch, with support for ray-tracing effects baked in.
Assetto Corsa Competizione is the exclusively GT3-focused offshoot of the fan-favourite, mod-friendly Assetto Corsa. That darling of the PC racing simulator community was ported to console back in 2016 to mixed results.
Competizione, though, is in most ways a vastly better racer than its broader progenitor: there’s night racing, there’s dynamic weather, and the AI is leaps and bounds more civilised and capable of battling fair and yielding corners. The problem is the console versions’ performance and control issues make it seem like it wasn’t quite ready to be released yet.
There are, no doubt, fans out there that will regard the contraction in total content between the original Assetto Corsa and Competizione disappointing, because scaling down to a single racing discipline means Competizione admittedly sheds a lot of surplus rides and racetracks. However, I think Competizione’s laser-like focus on a single underrepresented school of virtual racing is quite brilliant. Endurance racing is a fantastic challenge and, while it requires long stretches of unbroken focus and rapid reflexes, when you get into a consistent rhythm there’s an almost meditative quality to it.
Competizione understands this and includes an official selection of some of the world’s most respected circuits, and scores of racing opportunities: quick championships, long championships, a career mode, and host of fully-customisable custom events. Multiplayer is obviously supported and you have to reach a high track knowledge and safety rating in-game to be able to enter the competitive servers. However, custom lobbies aren’t available at launch and the game hasn’t let me into a single quick public race to date; it’s been greeting me with ‘No Servers Available’ for days.
The arsenal of exotic GT3 steeds on hand may be slim compared to some of Competizione’s racing peers, but they’re very distinct from each other in terms of handling characteristics and there’s a real world of difference between, say, a mid-engine Ferrari and a Bentley, which is a front-engine British holiday home on wheels. Moreover, they sound absolutely astonishing. The audio is a huge highlight overall, from the raw, mechanical squeaks and shrieks over the wicked exhaust tones to the bespoke track announcers in the background at each circuit.
Unlike the PC version, the Xbox One and PS4 versions of Competizione run at 30 frames per second, even on the One X and the Pro. That fact alone is not a sore point necessarily; hugely successful console racers like Driveclub and Forza Horizon 4 also run at 30 frames per second and they’re amongst some of the most visually-accomplished racing games of their generation. The key point of difference is those games have rigidly locked framerates, while Competizione seems to flutter. The result is a slightly uneven experience that obviously lacks the silkiness of the PC version, but also misses the consistency of other console racers: whether they run at 60 frames per second or a locktight 30. This is when I was playing on Xbox One X, too; not the standard launch consoles. Oddly enough, beyond the occasional temporary freeze on track, the frame rate seems at its worst in the menu screens, drastically diving to the point where the spinning car select screen resembles stop-motion animation.
It’s less of an issue, but it’s very noticeable that the steering animation has a tendency to appear wildly erratic when driving aggressively using a gamepad. The rotations seem like they’re matched to stick position rather than how fast a human could realistically twist a wheel. It makes the full cabin view and the otherwise well-positioned helmet cam a bit of a bust for pad users, so in these instances I found myself sticking with the more zoomed-in dash view – which crops out the steering wheel entirely.
The pad controls are otherwise pretty well-tuned; they’re a little devilish before the tyres come up to temperature but I had some great races and battles playing this way. The Blancpain series represented in Competizione allows factory traction control and ABS, which I tend to find useful playing racing sims with giant hands on tiny triggers anyway, and that helps make the pad controls less daunting. The default steering settings are intuitive enough to let you generally catch and correct a little oversteer; you just need a delicate touch on turn-in as the steering is quite sensitive on the stick. Controller force feedback is a bit vanilla, though, and the controller response to clipping curbs is pretty feeble.
Competizione is, of course, aimed at racing enthusiasts, and using a wheel makes you mostly immune to those weird driver arm display quirks. However, getting it working in the first place was bafflingly cumbersome. Our Thrustmaster TS-XW Racer wasn’t even properly detected at first, and then the buttons worked but not the steering or pedals. After a bunch of apparently fruitless fiddling around in the control assignment menus and a pair of reboots, I eventually got it running by resetting the button bindings (twice) and turning the wheel off and on again. I should restate that all this fussing was done with the d-pad and buttons on the wheel itself; Competizione recognised them, but not the throttle, brake, or any steering input. Once the wheel had finally registered I took the track only to discover my maximum wheel rotation had arbitrarily switched itself to just 40 degrees, which is utterly undriveable (this bug repeated itself several days later after going through the same broken process of plugging in the Thrustmaster). Helpfully, most settings (including steering rotation limit) can be manually adjusted through the pause menu without quitting the track but this issue with steering wheels is a supremely daft problem to have considering it’s clearly built to be played this way.
After finding a suitable wheel rotation angle, force feedback on the TS-XW seemed surprisingly flaccid at first. That was odd considering how impeccable the driving experience is in the console port of the original Assetto Corsa, but that of course has its own problems. I’ve improved it via some finagled settings but it’s still probably a bit lighter than I’d like.
Regardless of whether you’re using a wheel or pad I can’t personally recommend the chase camera; it’s rather stiff, so the moment you get any kind of oversteer the camera yaws instantly, exaggerating even minor slip and regularly turning small losses of control into total tankslappers. Chase cam isn’t my preference in racing sims at the best of times and I found this one extra challenging due to these factors.
Also, regardless of whether you’re using a wheel or pad, don’t bother with manual options for things like the pit limiter, or lights or wipers and such; there are already about a billion more things to map functionality to than you’ll have buttons. We’re not working with keyboards here!
