The next big update for Xbox One is out now, and it includes some changes to Xbox Game Pass and improved Alexa support for voice commands. Starting with the new Xbox Game Pass features, a new “Play Later” tab has been introduced. As its name suggests, this is a hub where you can add games as a reminder to yourself to play later.
The other big part of the July Xbox One update is improved functionality for Alexa voice commands. Specifically, a variety of new voice commands have been added that are specific to Xbox Game Pass. For example, you can now ask Alexa things like, “What’s new on Game Pass this month?” or “What’s popular on Game Pass?” or “What’s leaving Game Pass,” among many other things.
You can also now use Alexa for social networking; you can ask, “Alexa, what are my friends playing?” or, “Alexa, is [friend’s name] online right now?” among many other things. Also, you can now pair your Xbox controller using Alexa by saying, “Alexa, ask Xbox to pair my controller.”
In addition, Alexa now supports more countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and Spain.
In other news, the next Xbox–Project Scarlett–was announced at E3 2019. The next-generation system, which plays Xbox One games, too–is scheduled for release in Holiday 2020. Pricing hasn’t been announced yet; it might depend on Trump’s tariffs.
The upcoming Joker movie is based on one of the most recognizable comic book characters, but the film itself doesn’t borrow much at all from the source material, it seems. Director Todd Phillips said in an interview with Empire that the movie doesn’t follow “anything” from the comic books. People are probably going to be upset about this, he predicted.
“We didn’t follow anything from the comic books, which people are gonna be mad about,” Phillips, who also wrote the script, said in the interview. “We just wrote our own version of where a guy like Joker might come from. That’s what was interesting to me. We’re not even doing Joker, but the story of becoming Joker. It’s about this man.”
Pretty much every movie based on comic book characters varies in part from the source material, but it’s interesting to hear Phillips say Joker will stray even further and that he anticipates some amount of blowback. The movie is an origin story of sorts, but beyond that, the plot details are under wraps.
Three-time Oscar nomineee Joaquin Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck / The Joker in the upcoming film. Empire magazine also has an exclusive new image of Phoenix putting on his Joker makeup that you can see in the embed above. The movie also stars Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, and Frances Conroy.
Joker opens in theatres on October 4. It’s something of a change for Phillips, who previously made the Hangover and Old School comedies. He also wrote for Borat, which earned him his Oscar nomination.
Netflix announced that, after four days of streaming service data, Stranger Things: Season 3 has been watched by 40.7 million “household accounts,” while 18.2 million of them have already finished the entire new season.
Netflix confirmed the data on its Twitter account, indicating the 40.7 million accounts watching since the show’s July 4 debut is a higher number than any other film or series in its first four days on the service.
It’s worth noting that Netflix used the phrase “household accounts” to explain Stranger Things’ success, which is different from its use of just the word “account” in announcements for past Netflix ratings successes like Sex Education or the word “members” for those who watched Season 1 of You. It’s unclear if the change in wording denotes different measurements for each series or simply Netflix using similar phrasing to mean the same thing.
Super Mario Maker 2 is here! And while we’re blown away by some of the awesome community maps and levels that we’ve seen so far, we also wanted to get in on the action ourselves.
Just like last time, we’ve paired up our editors with one another, and they’ll build levels for each other. Whether these are fun/cool tributes to our favorite Mario games or Machiavellian death traps built solely to destroy friendships remains to be seen, but either way, it’s going to be a good time.
One of Fortnite‘s most recent challenges involves destroying grills scattered around the map. This is simple enough in theory–just destroy any grills you come across–but locating them can be a hurdle you’ll need to overcome. Luckily, we’ve put together the video guide above with locations all around the map for where you’ll find these grills. You need to destroy seven total, but these don’t have to be done in a single match, and they don’t have to be different ones. What that means is that, provided you’re patient, you can return to the same grill across seven different matches and destroy it each time to complete this challenge.
This is the final new challenge to be introduced as part of the 14 Days of Summer event, although you’ll have a full week after the release of this challenge to complete it (and any others you might not have done). Finishing this challenge will net you a banner and a step of progress toward unlocking the Smoothie back bling.
Dr. Stone is one of the most anticipated anime series of the Summer 2019 season. Based on the Weekly Shonen Jump manga of the same name, Dr. Stone isn’t your typical shonen series. Similarly to Winter 2019’s The Promised Neverland, Dr. Stone is a story where conflicts regularly focus on brains over brawn, sees the power of friendship frequently fail to overcome overwhelming odds, and is fairly introspective. At Anime Expo 2019, GameSpot asked Weekly Shonen Jump editor Hiroyuki Honda about the changing landscape of shonen stories and the production behind Dr. Stone.
“The titles that Weekly Shonen Jump carries is defined by the demographic, and I think the shonen demographics are now just changing,” Honda said. “The popularity is definitely shown in the polls that [stories like Dr. Stone] are the ones the readers now like. The reader demographic defines what is in the titles, so titles like The Promised Neverland and Dr. Stone are very popular now but they might not have been five years ago. And five, ten years down the line these type of stories might not fit what readers want anymore. The demographic defines shonen and that demographic is changing over time.”
“Popular authors tend to have a very good grasp of what is popular in the now and an understanding of what will be popular; they’re ahead of their time,” he continued. “Take One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Haikyu, take any popular [Weekly Shonen Jump title] and you’ll see they’re written to be what the readers want while also evolving to be slightly ahead of their time.”
The story of Dr. Stone follows Taiju, an average student who’s fairly physically fit, and his best friend Senku, an aspiring scientist and brilliant mathematician. On the day Taiju decides to confess his feelings for Yuzuriha, who he’s had a crush on for five years, a strange green light encases every living person on the planet in stone. Taiju remains conscious through his desire to confess his feelings, and Senku does the same by counting the seconds that pass. Over 3,000 years later, the two are mysteriously freed from the stone and set out to find a way to undo everyone else’s petrification, while also working towards recreating every scientific advancement that humanity has ever made so as to rebuild society.
Honda said that production on the anime of Dr. Stone took roughly two years. During the process, there were quite a few meetings to figure out how to translate the manga’s introspective moments so they’d fit into an anime. “[TMS Entertainment] kept most of [the internal] monologue from the manga,” Honda said. “There were lengthy meetings with the director and producer where they basically have the whole script to decide what can be kept. But if they feel [any monologue] is too long, then they split it into two segments or use special effects to portray some of the meaning of the original monologue through action.”
“Anime should be slightly different from the manga because manga and anime are completely different expressive mediums even if the fundamental philosophy that the story tells should still be the same,” he continued. “Because if you make an anime that’s completely faithful to the manga, then the final end product will seem slightly off.” Honda went on to explain that these adjustments can be as simple as changing the perspective of a shot to better convey what the original manga panel is suggesting, or as complex as reorganizing scenes so that it’s easier to follow certain storytelling threads.
Surprisingly–given it’s the main focus of the story–one of the biggest changes between the manga and anime versions of Dr. Stone is the scientific lore. Honda stresses the changes won’t impact the story; they’re primarily to ensure the safety of the younger viewers who might check out the anime. “Politically, there’s nothing really changing in Dr. Stone, but [the anime] is slightly careful about the scientific aspects because some of the stuff [Taiju and Senku] are doing is pretty dangerous. So the studio has to tweak things a little, tone the science down, or change scenes slightly so that people don’t try [Taiju and Senku’s] experiments at home and get hurt.”
Dr. Stone is currently airing on Crunchyroll with an English dub scheduled to premiere on Funimation.
Ahead of the game’s release at the end of this month, a demo for Kill la Kill The Game: IF is available now to PlayStation 4 players. The demo’s a little hefty, clocking in just shy of 8GB, but it’s totall free.
The demo will take you through the game’s first story chapter and includes a versus mode with several playable characters including protagonist Ryuko Matoi, antagonist Satsuki Kiryuin, Ira Gamagoori, and Uzu Sanageyama. Additionally, publisher PQube posted a play guide to YouTube showcasing the 3D fighter’s various mechanics. Check out the play guide below to prep yourself for battle.
We got a glimpse of Kill la Kill’s story mode in May, which seems to run in line with Trigger’s 2013 anime with a few differences. The biggest change is a switch in antagonist, going from ultimate series baddie Ragyo Kiryuin to something seemingly far more sinister.
Kill la Kill The Game: IF is set to launch on July 26 for PC, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4.
During Anime Expo 2019, Studio Trigger’s Promare made its international premiere. The movie is the theatrical debut for the studio behind the hugely popular anime Kill la Kill, featuring the same director as the series, Hiroyuki Imaishi.
Promare is set in a world where a mutation has caused hundreds of people to develop pyrokinetic abilities. Labeled as the Burnish, these mutants are discriminated against by normal humans. The movie stars two protagonists: Galo, the newest member of the special firefighting team responsible for suppressing Burnish-created fires and ensuring the threats are subdued so they can be arrested, and Lio, the leader of the terrorist organization fighting for civil rights for the Burnish. Between the two, Promare is told primarily through Galo’s point-of-view, seeing him learn that the Burnish are still human beings and deserving of the same rights as everyone else.
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Promare – Official Japanese Trailer | Studio Trigger
Top New Game Releases On Switch, PS4, Xbox One, And PC This Week — July 7-13, 2019
During a group interview at Anime Expo, GameSpot asked Studio Trigger about the reasoning for telling a story mostly through the eyes of an oppressor, albeit an unwitting one. Creative director Hiromi Wakabayashi answered, “The main objective of the film wasn’t to depict an opposition between the minorities, which is the Burnish, and the majority, which is the human race. We thought it would be easier to present the story if we made Galo the actual main protagonist even though he’s on the oppressing side. He’s in the middle ground. He’s not intentionally oppressing. If we were to make Lio the main protagonist, Promare would become a story about the oppressed overcoming their oppressors and that’s not what we were trying to go for. Who Galo is is really hard to depict in real life. A lot of people have strong opinions but don’t act on them.”
“In real life, everybody’s pretty much contradicting themselves,” Promare character designer Shigeto Koyama added. “Activists want to save the earth. They want to try to keep the ozone layer. But they also want air conditioner at the same time. They want to protect the ozone layer, but they don’t want to walk and would rather use their car. A lot of them can be hypocrites. Everybody has some kind of fault in their philosophy, and Promare ends where we don’t know how Galo is going to continue on with his. That’s where the story kind of stops. That’s the same with us. What are [we each] going to do?”
Despite releasing over half a decade after Kill la Kill, Promare possesses many similarities to the 2013 series, including character design, soundtrack, and narrative themes. The origin of these similarities extends beyond both anime sharing the same director though. During the group interview, Studio Trigger revealed that production on the movie began before Kill la Kill even ended, so the ideas behind both were formulated very close together.
The major difference between Kill la Kill and Promare is the latter’s much brighter color palette which utilizes a lot more reds, oranges, and pinks. These colors were used in Promare because the movie uses so much more CG. “We knew that we were going to be incorporating heavy use of CG from the beginning, so we needed to make the designs and the colors as simple as possible,” director Imaishi said during the group interview. Promare manages to blend together traditional 2D and 3D CG animation styles better than many anime have done previously. Imaishi believes “CG will become more and more prevalent in the animation industry” going forward, ultimately normalizing a hybrid style that combines both 2D and 3D.
Promare is scheduled to release publicly in US theaters on September 17. In GameSpot Universe’s Promare review, I wrote, “Promare’s plot does stumble, most notably when it comes to how it builds its world and fleshes out the main cast, but it takes enough cues from what made Kill la Kill such a hit to then go out and tell its own take on why discrimination is bad and why everyone should learn to love their fellow person. Galo’s origin story of becoming a firefighting superhero is framed with over-the-top action pieces, comedy, and well-timed pieces of music, and though he delivers an incredible finishing blow in the epic final battle, it’s his evolving rivalry with Lio that gives the movie its satisfying ending.”
