Sony hosted a developer summit on August 3 where it reportedly unveiled new information regarding its upcoming next-gen PlayStation VR. According to YouTube channel PSVR Without Parole (and with further corroboration from UploadVR) among the announcements made were details about the unit’s controllers, as well as the studio’s game development strategy going forward. While much of the reported information was new, some statements seem to confirm previous rumors about the PSVR 2, making them seem increasingly more likely to be true.
According to reports, the upcoming VR unit’s headset will feature the previously reported HDR OLED screen technology. This will allow players to view 2000 x 2040 pixels per eye for a total 4K resolution, as well provide a 110 degree field of view–a noticeable upgrade from the current PSVR’s 100. In addition, the new headset might also utilize flexible scaling resolution, which limits the device to only render what you’re actually looking at. Through this technique, Sony would greatly reduce the amount of strain placed on the PlayStation 5, and greatly improve the system’s overall performance.
Moving to the PSVR 2’s controllers, it was reported the ones currently in development will be equipped with sensors that not only detect when a player is touching a controller, but their exact finger location as well. According to the rumors, the new controllers will also be able to tell how far away a person’s fingers are from the controller at any given time, which seems fairly similar to technology seen in Google’s latest phones.
Lastly, Sony reportedly told developers it’s “looking to pursue a hybrid model for future AAA releases on PlayStation” when it comes to PSVR incorporation. What this seemingly means is that PlayStation is looking to have more games with optional VR support, similar to both No Man’s Sky and Resident Evil 7 Biohazard. However, as of now there’s still been no word on if previous PSVR games will be compatible with the new system.
As of right now, we still have no information on what the PSVR 2’s official name is or when it’s set to release. However, recent reports indicate it will likely be late 2022.
James Gunn may be done with The Suicide Squad, but DC isn’t done with Gunn yet. While he hasn’t announced a second DC Films project just yet, the studio already has plans to bring him back into the fold, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Gunn is always welcome back, whatever he wants to do. He really has a vision and he’s a great partner with us. Whenever he wants to come back, we’re ready for him,” said DC Films president Walter Hamada. “He’ll be back. We have more stuff planned.”
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Gunn left a strong impression on those he worked with on the film, which hits HBO Max and theaters tomorrow.
“If I read the script and didn’t know James Gunn was going to direct it, it would have been a straight-up ‘no,'” said Margot Robbie, who stars in the film for her third turn as Harley Quinn. “I was like, no one could pull this off.”
“This is what happens when you leave a brilliant man alone with his thoughts,” said John Cena, who continues to wear his Peacemaker costume everywhere, apparently. “I didn’t even hear what it was [before saying yes].”
It wasn’t just the actors, though. Producer Charles Roven noted to THR that The Suicide Squad came in both under budget and with no reshoots.
“He storyboards every single shot in the movie,” Roven said. “Not just the action sequences.”
Jeopardy is moving closer to revealing its new permanent host and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be LeVar Burton.
That’s because the game show is moving closer to finalizing a deal with executive producer and former guest host Mike Richards to become the new permanent host, according to Variety. This news comes after a massive fan campaign for the former Reading Rainbow host and Star Trek actor to become the new host after a successful guest stint.
So grateful and humbled. Thank you everyone for this opportunity of a lifetime. Thank you to the folks at Jeopardy! and the Sony team and to the contestants. What a week! pic.twitter.com/dgT1YUpjcm
A Sony Pictures spokesperson told Variety that discussions with several potential candidates are ongoing, however. A source close to the show also told the publication that there’s no guarantee Richards’ deal will go through and that Jeopardy is keeping discussions with other candidates open as a result. Still, Richards remains the front-runner, according to that source.
Richards has produced more than 4000 hours of game shows ranging from The Price Is Right to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, along with many other television classics.
Beyond serving as one of the many guest hosts of Jeopardy since Trebek’s death, Richards is also an executive producer for the classic game show, a job he landed last year. Variety’s report says Richards “impressed Sony Pictures brass with his command of the fast-paced game and easy on-air manner.”
“The launch of Mass Effect Legendary Edition – the remaster of the first three Mass Effect games – reignited the passion of fans around the world, driving sales performance well above our expectations,” said EA CEO Andrew Wilson.
EA did not share exact sales numbers for Mass Effect Legendary Edition, but it proved to be popular on Steam, reaching highest-ever player count for any Mass Effect or BioWare game. It reached an all-time peak of 59,817 players, and was the second-highest ever player count on Steam for an EA game, trailing only Apex Legends.
EA’s other exclusively single-player game for 2021, Josef Fares’ It Takes Two, also outperformed EA’s expectations.
Despite the success of EA’s lonely single-player games, it was the publisher’s portfolio of multiplayer live service, sports, and mobile games that staved off a significant chunk of net income decline. EA emphasized it is continuing to focus on live service games and developing them as ongoing ecosystems rather than adhering to traditional sales models. The company reported a total revenue of $1.55 billion, up 6% from last year.
It’ll be interesting to see if EA’s other single-player remaster project, the Dead Space remake, proves to be as successful. EA executives said a new Dead Space is one of the most-requested games second only to the Skate franchise. IGN spoke with the developers at EA Motive about how the horror remake is being rebuilt in EA’s Frostbite engine.
If you’re curious, you can check out this infographic EA released that shows we’re all (mostly) good people who would never say mean things to attractive aliens.
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Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/investment for IGN.
On this week’s episode of IGN’s PlayStation show Podcast Beyond!, host Jonathon Dornbush is joined by Tom Marks, Mark Medina, and Taylor Lyles to discuss the latest news in the world of PlayStation, including the confirmed delay of Kena, the reported Horizon Forbidden West delay, and updated release windows for Solar Ash, Stray, and more.
Plus, we discuss some of the PS5’s new software update beta, like the updates to trophy tracking and M.2 SSD compatibility, Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut new details about updates to the Legends multiplayer mode, and much more.
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Jonathon Dornbush is IGN’s Senior Features Editor, Host of Podcast Beyond!, and father to his Boy, Loki, who is a dog. You can find Jonathon and cute photos of Loki on Twitter @jmdornbush.
If you took Torchlight, mixed in a heaping helping of Norse mythology, and topped it off with the looming apocalypse countdown from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, you’d have something that looks a fair bit like Tribes of Midgard. This fast-paced, colorful action RPG doesn’t give you a lot of time to breathe and explore its exciting world when you’re racing against time. But when you work together with friends to overcome its challenges, that tension can be rewarding.
There are two distinct ways to play Tribes of Midgard, and both revolve around protecting a seed of the World Tree at the center of an upgradeable settlement. Endless mode just lets you see how long you can last against infinitely increasing waves, but it’s the less interesting of the two. I’ll mostly be talking about the story-based Saga mode, in which you have about two hours to complete a set of objectives and defeat a final boss before an endless winter overtakes the map and renders it uninhabitable.
By day, you’ll roam around a set of diverse and increasingly dangerous areas completing simple quests, levelling up, and gathering materials and souls to upgrade your gear and your settlement. The quests themselves are pretty straightforward and predictable: Go kill something, bring me some items, clear out a mini dungeon. The satisfying combat holds this all together, but Midgard soon reveals itself to be more of a time management game than anything. Get as much done by the light of day as you can, because every night you’ll have to warp back to your settlement to defend it from the minions of Hel. Given how diverse, detailed, and intriguing the world can be though, I often found this hindered my ability to really explore and enjoy it.
Fi Fi Fo Fun
Throwing a comically oversized wrench into this routine are the lumbering jotnar, who will appear from time to time at the edges of the map and slowly plod toward your village. They’re not the most challenging bosses in the world, with slow and obvious attack animations that are fairly easy to avoid. But their massive health pools present a strategic challenge: waiting too long to take them out might mean you can’t topple them in time before they wreck your base. Of all the tribulations Tribes of Midgard sent my way, these were probably my favorites.
The issue is, even though single-player is listed as a feature on Steam, this is all just too much to keep up with by yourself. Tribes of Midgard is very clearly intended to be a co-op game, and it definitely works much better when you can get a big squad of up to ten vikings together with a clear plan and good communication. But alone, it feels like if I’m not sprinting from objective to objective with the efficiency of a speedrunner, there’s no way I’m going to be able to finish everything before the Fimbulwinter sets in. Being able to increase the time available before the Apocalypse in solo mode would make it much more enjoyable, since certain things like gathering speed don’t scale when you’re alone.
On your way to doomsday, you’ll have to personally harvest a lot of resources like wood and stone that can be used to build new base structures, upgrade defenses, and level up your NPC crafters. This is an interesting resource management layer, but it often felt like a lot of the upgrades weren’t worth my time. Since certain materials like stone are so rare, if I spent them to strengthen my base rather than on critical objectives like repairing the bridge to a boss area, it seemed like I was setting myself up for failure. Especially in a group, it seemed easier to just defend the base ourselves and save on materials.
Woe to the Vanquished
The indignity of losing your Tree or freezing to death is mitigated a fair bit by the fact that you still earn profile XP and account-bound currency based on how many days you survived and how many bosses you killed, even if you die or have to abandon a session. You can also unlock new character classes by completing certain achievements. Eventually you can earn the ability to start with better gear or more resources, but the benefits for grinding out profile levels drop off after a while since you’ll mostly be unlocking side-grades and crafting recipes, where I would have liked to see some even stronger starting gear for all that time investment.
At least new playstyle options offer some incentive to keep at it. The starting Warrior is a good all-arounder with an upgraded dodge roll that will let you avoid trouble. I really liked the Berserker, who does more damage the longer she stays on the attack. And you can open up some really nice synergies later on with support classes like the Warden, who can decrease crafting costs and teleport back to base on a reduced cooldown.
I should also mention that there is a premium currency you can buy with real money, but it’s only used for cosmetic items, there are no randomized loot boxes or gambling elements, and you can unlock everything without paying other than the Deluxe Edition exclusive cosmetics.
EA said that it will be able to add real-world college athlete likeness to its upcoming NCAA Football game “very seamlessly” thanks to a “database structure” of the game’s technical architecture.
With the Supreme Court’s ruling that student athletes can profit off of their name, image, and likeness, the doors have been opened for companies like EA to potentially return to using real-world athletes in sports games. To this point EA’s response has measured, saying that it is watching for developments and plans to explore the possibility of implementing real-world athletes into their games.
“We are building architecture of the game with database structure if and when that comes online we can add it to the game very seamlessly,” EA Chief Operating Officer Blake Jorgensen says.
The statement indicates that EA is certainly building up some sort of technical infrastructure that would allow it to more easily implement real-world athletes’ name, image, and likeness. What form that ultimately takes though, and how quickly it can be achieved, remains unknown.
For now, don’t expect any new developments anytime soon. EA announced it was returning to college football games way back in February 2021, despite the lack of student athletes’ likeness.
Details (including release date) have yet to be announced for EA Sports College Football, or any other college sports games EA may have plans for. Collegiate Licensing Current indications are that the next college football game may not arrive until 2023.
James Gunn was recently asked about that time in 2019 when the acclaimed director Martin Scorsese said Marvel movies aren’t cinema, calling the comments “awful cynical.”
As reported by The Playlist, Gunn was asked during his appearance on the Happy. Sad. Confused. Podcast how he felt about Scorsese’s two-year-old comments seeing as though Gunn is responsible for some of the most critically-acclaimed and unique superhero films.
“I just think it seems awful cynical that he would keep coming out against Marvel and then that is the only thing that would get him press for his movie,” Gunn said. “He’s creating his movie in the shadow of the Marvel films, and so he uses that to get attention for something he wasn’t getting as much attention as he wanted for it.”
But Gunn doesn’t necessarily disagree with Scorsese either. “There are a lot of things that are true about what he said,” Gunn added. “There are a lot of heartless, soulless, spectacle films out there that don’t reflect what should be happening.” Gunn says he has had plenty of encounters where he approached film directors asking them to elevate the blockbuster only to see these directors “cater to every single studio whim,” which Gunn says grossed him out.
Despite Scorsese’s comments, he is still one of the most respected directors in film, and Marvel movies are still some of the biggest in the world. So basically, all of this back-and-forth exists mainly for debate.
Gunn’s next superhero movie, The Suicide Squad, is out this weekend and IGN’s review says it’s a great one. Meanwhile, Scorses is hard at work on his next project Killers of the Flower Moon for Apple TV Plus (which recently cast Brendan Fraser!).
The Suicide Squad is introducing moviegoers to some of the weirdest and most obscure DC villains this side of Condiment King. And none are more bizarre than Peacemaker, the vigilante so devoted to peace that he’ll kill literally anyone to preserve it. Not only does this DCEU movie sequel feature John Cena as Peacemaker, but the character will also then branch out in his own spinoff series on HBO Max.
Haven’t heard of Peacemaker? The Suicide Squad writer-director James Gunn describes him as a superhero, supervillain, and the world’s biggest douchebag.
“He’s like a douchey Captain America,” agreed Cena when his take on the character was first revealed during DC FanDome.
“[Peacemaker is] a guy who believes in peace at any cost, no matter how many people he needs to kill along the way,” Gunn added.
But just who is this violent vigilante? Let’s meet Christopher Smith, a.k.a. DC Comics’ Peacemaker. In this article, we’ll cover the following:
Christopher Smith was a pacifist when he made his first appearance in Charlton Comics’ The Fightin’ 5 #40. A member of a paramilitary force dedicated to keeping the world safe, only non-lethal weapons were kept in his arsenal—until the character was revamped in an explosive four-issue miniseries in 1988. After the Crisis on Infinite Earths, in which he made his DC Comics debut, this new version of Christopher Smith still wanted to keep the peace… so much, in fact, that the haunted crimefighter is willing to do whatever it takes to ensure it.
“I’m Peacemaker,” the unstable anti-hero yells, “and I’ll kill to keep the peace!”
Born Christopher Schmidt, Peacemaker was the only child of a wealthy couple. Smith’s father, a former Nazi concentration camp commandant, valued strength and power above all. He died by suicide when Smith was just five years old. Smith saw it happen. The troubled young boy would go on to the military after completing high school, where he came face to face with the horrific realities of war.
Accused of massacring innocent people, Smith was arrested and tried for war crimes. While serving his sentence, he agreed to join a secret Pentagon anti-terrorism program called Project: Peacemaker. The agents in the program trained on a high-tech military base but were never deployed, and Smith was eventually freed on his promised parole. The idea later inspired Smith to become a costumed crimefighter as a form of penance for the terrible crimes both he and his father committed.
As he unleashed his form of justice, Smith often heard the voice of his father in his head. It continued to plague him well into his raging crusade for peace. The vigilante suffered from delusions that not only was the spirit of his father haunting him, but also that the voices of those he had slain were trapped inside his unusual helmet.
Peacemaker operated under the Agency, a secret government organization that sent the well-armed warrior on anti-terrorism missions around the world. His fragile state of mind made him an unpredictable asset, and the Agency attempted to keep him as stable as possible through therapy and highly trained agents working with him.
He was said to have been killed at the hands of Eclipso on a mission for Checkmate (a division of Task Force X, the same super-secret government organization that spawned the Suicide Squad), but years later he returned to the hero business to help new Blue Beetle Jaime Reyes. Smith was also identified as a potential recruit of the fear-powered Sinestro Corps because of the terror he had inflicted as Peacemaker, but the yellow power ring ultimately rejected him. He served as a partner and mentor to Jaime for a short time.
Peacemaker was last seen joining the fight against Doctor Manhattan in 2019’s Doomsday Clock #13. This is strangely fitting as the story that became Watchmen was originally pitched as “Who Killed the Peacemaker?” As with many of Watchmen’s characters, who were based on Charlton Comics players, Peacemaker was the inspiration behind the Comedian.
The anti-hero is a master of weapons. He wields deadly, technologically advanced weaponry and wears bulletproof body armor as he dispenses justice. The strange-looking silver helmet on Peacemaker’s head is capable of emitting ultrasonic frequencies to overwhelm the senses of anyone in range, as well as scramble electronic signals. The helmet also contains long-range sensors for detecting any hostile forces in the area.
Peacemaker has other high-tech gadgetry at his disposal, including a decked-out jet plane and a jetpack that grants him the ability to fly.
While Smith wasn’t officially a member of the Suicide Squad in the comics, he did operate under the purview of Amanda Waller and Task Force X like that top-secret team. DC FanDome gave fans their first look at the gun-toting character as he finally joins the team in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad sequel. Peacemaker is among a number of new Task Force X recruits, all of whom are charged with infiltrating war-torn Corto Maltese and destroying a secret laboratory that may or may not contain the enormous starfish kaiju known as Starro.
Little is known about the HBO Max Peacemaker series, which will also feature John Cena as the character, but we do know the series will serve as an origin story for the character, which doesn’t rule out the possibility that Peacemaker will die in The Suicide Squad. The cast also includes Steve Agee as John Economos, Danielle Brooks as Leota Adebayo, Robert Patrick as Auggie Smith, Jennifer Holland as Emilia Harcourt, Chris Conrad as the DC Comics character Vigilante/Adrian Chase and Nhut Le as Judomaster.
The eight-episode HBO Max series, begins production in 2021 and will debut on HBO Max in January 2022. “Peacemaker will be live-action and action-packed. His shotgun will be single action. His favorite movie is Action Jackson,” Gunn teased on Twitter.
The Peacemaker TV series is expected to debut in January 2022, and will feature eight episodes in its first season.
Aug. 4, 2021: This story has been updated with the latest information about The Suicide Squad.
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Kelly Knox is a freelance entertainment writer who also contributes to StarWars.com, DCComics.com, Nerdist, and more. Follow her on Twitter at @kelly_knox to talk Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, and comics.