Category: Games

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Death Stranding Director Hideo Kojima Coming To San Diego Comic-Con

Hideo Kojima’s new game, Death Stranding, was a no-show at E3 2019 last week. So when will we hear about it next? We might learn more at San Diego Comic-Con in July.

The game developer posted on Twitter today to say he and Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn are coming to San Diego Comic-Con. The specifics are unknown at this point, but it could be that the pair are appearing on some kind of joint panel where they talk about each other’s projects.

The full San Diego Comic-Con schedule hasn’t been posted yet, so there is no word yet on if the Kojima/Winding Refn panel is officially part of the show or connected to it in some other manner. The show runs July 18-21 in San Diego.

Winding Refn is the director of several Ryan Gosling movies including Drive and Only God Forgives. He appears in Death Stranding as the character “Heartman.”

He and Kojima are friends. Kojima appears in Winding Refn’s new Amazon show, Too Old To Die Young, in which he cuts off a man’s finger with a giant sword.

Winding Refn is just the latest celebrity to feature in Death Stranding. The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus plays the main character, while Lea Seydoux, Lindsay Wagner, Mads Mikkelsen, Margaret Qualley, Tommie Earl Jenkins, and Troy Baker all have roles in the game.

Death Stranding releases for PS4 on November 8.

Nintendo Is “Evaluating” Streaming Technology

With major players like Microsoft, Sony, and Google invested in game-streaming technologies, it could be the next big evolution for gaming. Now, a Nintendo executive has commented on the possibility of the Mario company getting involved.

Nintendo of America executive Charlie Scibetta told TechCrunch at E3 2019 that streaming is “certainly interesting technology.” He added that Nintendo is monitoring the technology, going on to say that for now at least Nintendo is focusing on physical game sales and sales through the Nintendo eShop.

“Streaming is certainly interesting technology,” he explained. “Nintendo is keeping a close eye on it and we’re evaluating it. We don’t have anything to announce right now in terms of adopting that technology. For us, it’s still physical and it’s digital downloads through our eShop.”

Another executive, marketing boss Doug Bowser (yes, that is his real name), told The Hollywood Reporter that “it’s always interesting to see what others are doing in the space” as it relates to streaming.

“We’re always interested in how various new technologies can enable different ways to play games,” he said.

While Nintendo might not have a streaming service of its own, the company does operate a subscription service in the form of the Nintendo Switch Online membership program.

And though Nintendo doesn’t offer a game-streaming service on Switch, other companies do. Capcom offers Resident Evil 7 as a streaming game on Switch in Japan, while Ubisoft does the same with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey in the country.

The public beta for Microsoft’s xCloud game-streaming service launches in October, while Google Stadia is slated for release in November. in other news, Microsoft and Sony recently announced an agreement for new cloud-gaming technologies.

Cyberpunk 2077 Dev On PS5 And Scarlett: “We’ll Look At It”

Cyberpunk 2077 is launching in April 2020, which is around six months before Project Scarlett and the rumored PlayStation 5 are supposedly scheduled to launch during the holiday season. Will The Witcher developer’s ambitious RPG also come to the new consoles? It’s something that developer CD Projekt Red is looking at, according to senior level designer Miles Tost.

He told GamerHubTV that CD Projekt Red is currently focused on the current generation of consoles and PC, though the studio is also considering next-generation systems. “We’ll look at [next-generation consoles] and go, ‘Maybe?’ But it’s not our area of interest right now.”

“Of course we are looking at what is happening in the games industry because we are part of it, and we need to always look forward,” he said. “But at the same time, we are a studio that really focuses on the work we’re doing now. So our full attention is on current-gen consoles and PC. Who knows? When the time comes for it, maybe [we’ll support next-gen consoles]. But until [Cyberpunk 2077 launches in April 2020], we have a thing to do. And as far as what I have heard, the next-gen consoles … Xbox just announced holiday 2020. So it’s not really a concern for us now because it comes way after where we want to release our game.”

Project Scarlett is launching in holiday 2020, while the PlayStation 5 is also rumored to be launching around then. Just today, analyst first Cowen & Company released a report that back that up, stating that Sony’s new system is expected to release in the fall/holiday season.

Project Scarlett and the PlayStation 5 are already confirmed to be backwards compatible, so it is expected that Cyberpunk 2077 will play on the new consoles. Both systems are more powerful than the beefiest current generation console hardware, so Tost is likely speaking about next-generation consoles in regards to what capabilities the new hardware might allow Cyberpunk 2077 to achieve on them.

Cyberpunk 2077 launches on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on April 16, 2020. The Matrix actor Keanu Reeves plays a major role in the game, though unfortunately he won’t sing.

Magic: The Gathering Card Reveal – Check Out a Brand New Rare

Magic: The Gathering’s Core Set 2020 officially arrives from July 2nd, and we’ve been given the chance to exclusively reveal one of its new rare cards.

Flood of Tears is a six-mana sorcery ideal for use in a classic Blue control deck, and it looks a little something like this:

The high mana cost marks it out as something of a late-game play, but the high risk could lead to some very high rewards, allowing for devastating drops to pop up on a newly clean board.

Dropped into a deck with some extra trickery – Nissa, Who Shakes the World could turn those non-returned lands into creatures, for example – and Flood of Tears might make for a very effective play in the near future.

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The Gears Of War Movie Is Not Based On Any Game And Has No Influence On Game Series

The Gears Of War movie is set in an “alternate reality” separate from the mainline Gears of War video game series, and this is what could help it rise above the history of video game movies being mediocre or worse.

That’s according to Rod Fergusson, the head of developer The Coalition. He said in an interview with IGN that the thought process behind making the Gears of War movie was that it “has to be a great movie first and a Gears movie second.”

“Basically the way that we sort of reconciled that was, we said, ‘Oh, the movie should be an alternate reality. It should not be dependent on the game story, nor should it influence the game story.'”

Fergusson has been repeating this line of thinking about the Gears of War movie for years now.

According to Fergusson, this setup allows the writing team to craft original ideas in an open framework. He said he’s heard of other video game franchises that have approached movie writers with a “story Bible” that outlines in-depth rules for what the team can and cannot do. For the Gears of War movie, he took a different approach.

“When we did it, we were two pages. I was like, ‘Here’s two pages of thou shall nots and recommendations.’ We want people to have the freedom to have new ideas and to take things differently,” he explained.

The movie writers don’t have total freedom, however, as Fergusson said the Gears of War movie should take place on the franchise’s home planet of Sera. It also needs to feature “certain characters,” according to IGN, which is probably a reference to Marcus Fenix.

The Gears of War movie has been in various stages of development for 12 years already. The Lord of the Rings studio New Line Cinema purchased the rights to make a movie based on the game originally back in 2007, but in October 2016, Microsoft confirmed that the Gears of War movie was in the works with Universal Pictures.

Guardians of the Galaxy actor Dave Bautista has said Marcus Fenix is his dream role, but as of yet no casting news has been announced. F. Scott Frazier (xXx: Return of Xander Cage) was hired to write a draft of the script in November 2018.

No director has been announced for the movie. The late Tony Scott, who directed Top Gun and Man On Fire, reportedly wanted to direct the Gears of War movie.

As for the Gears of War series, the next game is Gears 5 which launches in September for Xbox One and PC. At E3, Microsoft showed off a brand-new mode called Escape. You can see 10 minutes of gameplay from Escape in the video above and read

8 Historical Events That Were Actually Aliens (According To Men In Black)

Anonymity is your name, silence your native tongue.

Anonymity is your name, silence your native tongue.

The Men in Black work covertly, protecting the Earth from aliens who mean to do us harm. If MIB does its job properly, the average person will never even know that the organization exists. But of course, it doesn’t always work out that way.

Usually, even in the worse case scenarios, MIB agents are able to set up a containment field, flash the neuralyzer, and change any witnesses’ memories to something benign. But on rare occasions, it’s beyond MIB’s ability to cover things up completely. And that’s when alien-based events are simply worked into Earth’s history; some human is credited with inventing this or destroying that, and no one is ever the wiser.

Here are 8 historical events that were actually thanks to the aliens, according to the Men in Black movies. Check out our review of Men in Black International, the fourth film in the long-running franchise, out now.

The Truly Heartwarming Tale Of How Microsoft Bought Double Fine

With Microsoft’s acquisition of quirky indie studio Double Fine Productions, announced during the company’s E3 2019 presentation, Microsoft now has 15 studios under its Xbox Game Studios umbrella. While president Tim Schafer has confirmed the purchase will have no effect on how the California-based studio conducts its business, the company did take to Twitter to satirize the news.

Schafer, in a 30-second video posted to the official Double Fine Twitter account, basically said Microsoft rolled up with “a bunch of money” and made the team an offer they couldn’t refuse. The video features all the slow-mo head movement and melodrama that would make any soap opera jealous.

The studio’s next game, Rad, a post-apocalyptic action game published by Bandai Namco, is set to release on August 20 for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Psychonauts 2–set to arrive sometime in 2020 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One–will mark the studio’s first game published under the Xbox Game Studios moniker.

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