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Disney added just a few more million subscribers to Disney+ over the last couple of months, totaling just over 103 million, which executives will likely have to address on the company’s earnings call later today.

As people in the United States start to venture out again, questions about what’s next for Disney are likely to come up on the call. Disney is preparing for movies to be released in theaters again (Cruella, Black Widow), more attendees at parks (Disneyand is open and Avengers Campus is just about ready to debut), and sports are basically back (good news for ESPN). New shows like WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier are keeping people’s attention — but are they still driving subscriber growth? Are the rainclouds that hovered over nearly every single one of Disney’s sectors are beginning to lift, or is it still too early to tell?

“We’re pleased to see more encouraging signs of recovery across our businesses, and we remain focused on ramping up our operations while also fueling long-term growth for the company,” Bob Chapek, CEO of Disney said in a press release. “This is clearly reflected in the reopening of our theme parks and resorts, increased production at our studios, the continued success of our streaming services, and the expansion of our unrivaled portfolio of multiyear sports rights deals for ESPN and ESPN+.”

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The most magical place on Earth

There’s no question that Disney has faced a tough year. While some of its competitors were able to lean on the strengths of their parent companies (both WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal are subsidiaries of AT&T and Comcast respectively, which saw broadband and mobile usage increase over the pandemic), Disney couldn’t. Two of the company’s top revenue drivers, Parks and Studios, took the biggest hit. Executives pointed to Disney+’s exponential growth as a highlight, and while there’s no question the speed of scaling is impressive, streaming isn’t yet a super profitable business.

Everything comes back to theme parks. In pre-pandemic times, the parks were Disney’s biggest revenue driver. By Disney’s third fiscal quarter in 2020 (ending in late June 2020), Disney saw its Parks revenue drop by 85 percent. Disney only recorded $983 million for the quarter compared to $6.58 billion the year before. By October 2020, as more people started to venture out to parks (including Disney World in Florida) albeit within a limited capacity, revenue grew slightly. Disney brought in $2.5 billion, but that was still a 61% drop from the year before, which saw $6.66 billion in revenue.

As of this quarter, Disney is seeing some return to life. The company recorded $3.2 billion in parks revenue. Still down from the same time period last year, but better than recent quarters.

For Disney executives, an increase is an increase. As vaccination rates continue to rise, and with new incentives for families and fans to visit parks (including Avengers Campus), executives are pointing toward the future for even stronger revenue growth. It may still be some time before Disney is hitting pre-pandemic numbers at its parks as capacity restrictions and general consumer hesitance is still in place, but as cases decline and as vaccination rates climb, Parks may once again become a big form of revenue.

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Figuring out how to get more people into the parks comes back to what Disney does best — content. Jungle Cruise, for example, is a live-action movie starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt based on a theme park ride of the same name. Much like Pirates of the Caribbean, part of developing a film or series based on a theme park ride is encouraging fans to then purchase tickets to the park and enjoy said ride.

Content is king

On that note, Disney executives are going to have to answer questions about how they’re approaching theatrical exclusives versus hybrid releases. Just before today’s earnings, Dwayne Johnson confirmed Jungle Cruise would hit theaters and Disney+ as a Premier Access title (meaning it’ll cost subscribers an extra $30) on the same day. This is the same strategy Disney has used with Mulan, Raya and the Last Dragon, Cruella, and Black Widow.

Previously, CEO Bob Chapek referred to the decision to release some films through a hybrid distribution model as dependent on “what our slate of titles are and whether we think that we need to put something on the service for those particular guests or whether this is something that we could use as another data point in our exploration of Premier Access same date with theatrical.” Or, more simply, movies that Disney executives think people will pay for on Disney+ instead of using a “free” film to entice more subscribers to sign up, like Soul.

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What does this mean for big tentpole titles down the road like Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings? The theatrical business is still crucial to Disney; arguably, it is the most crucial for Disney out of all the studios. Disney films are also the most crucial for theatrical exhibitors like AMC, making up more than 50% of all global box office revenue in 2019. How are executives thinking about streaming exclusives, hybrids, and theatrical only movies going forward?

This is especially true when the average revenue per user (ARPU) on the Disney+ side is $3.99, down from $5.63 the year before.

It’s not all doom and gloom. For the last year, Disney has proven its streaming strategy is working. More subscribers are being added every quarter, Disney has a robust line of new shows (including several from Marvel and Star Wars) hitting Disney+ throughout the year. Disney is also making deals to make ESPN+ and Hulu more appealing to customers, including bringing FX titles to Hulu and looking out for more sport leagues licensing opportunities to satiate cord cutters desires.

But if Disney+ growth is beginning to slow, there are questions that need to be answered. Executives just need to help analysts, investors, and fans understand how all of Disney’s various sections fit together together as life approaches some form of normalcy again. Hopefully, many of these questions will be answered during today’s call.

Auto-save has been a hot topic of conversation among Returnal players since its release last month. Housemarque’s roguelite is excellent, but it’s also very hard, and runs can last for more than two hours. That’s a long time to anchor yourself to your PS5.

Housemarque says it’s heard the feedback from fans, but that implementing a save feature is easier said than done. “We understand that there are some systems in place that are currently a hindering factor,” Housemarque marketing director Mikael Havari told Axios today.

Havari’s comments dampen hopes of a solution that would enable players to quit without fear of losing their progress. While other roguelites like Hades includes a quicksave solution that retains the tension of permadeath, it’s clearly not so easy to implement such a feature in Returnal.

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Other developers have sounded off on this subject. “I often see players exclaim how easy it is to add something, especially if other games have it,” Spelunky designer Derek Yu told Vice Games last week, “but every team and game has different priorities and nothing is really as trivial as it seems from the outside.”

As one of the first so-called “AAA roguelites,” Returnal stands out for its beautiful visuals, arcade mechanics, and storytelling features. While its progression revolves around discrete “chambers,” they tend to flow more smoothly than in other roguelites, where you pass through a door to enter the next room. This is in part because Roguelite is meant to highlight the lack of load times on the PS5. (https://www.ign.com/videos/how-returnal-shows-the-ps5s-power-performance-review)

Still, difficult as it is, Havari says Housemarque is looking for a solution. “But currently, we just don’t know exactly what it is. So it’s very difficult to announce anything, because I think there’s a lot of different people looking for different things.”

Looks like you’ll have to keep your PS5 in rest mode a little longer. If you’re impatient, here’s info on Returnal’s main ending and its true ending. You can also read our Returnal review right here.

Returnal is available now on PS5.

A paralyzed man is using his mind to create real-time sentences on a screen.

The man’s name is unknown, but he’s referred to as T5 by the team of researchers from Stanford University studying his brain and according to a CNN report, he’s able to write sentences on a screen in real-time by visualizing the movement required to write letters.

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If he wants to write “yes,” he must visualize himself writing the y, the e, and the s. T5 was 65 years old when the study was performed and he was paralyzed from the neck down for nearly a decade after sustaining a spinal cord injury in 2007, according to CNN. The Stanford University team implanted two sensors into the left side of T5’s brain and asked him to imagine writing on paper with a pen.

The implanted sensors, which were comprised of 4-millimeter by 4-millimeter electrodes, then translated the brain activity happening as a result of T5 trying to imagine writing into words on a screen. It did all of this in real-time, too. According to CNN, T5 “was able to communicate by text at speeds rivaling those achieved by his able-bodied peers texting on a smartphone.”

More specifically, T5 was able write 18 words per minute, which is more than double the previous for someone typing with a brain interface like this, according to the team’s Nature journal published about the study, as noted by CNN. The team says that on average, an able-bodied person types about 23 words per minute on a smartphone.

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Stanford professor, Jaimie Henderson, who is one of the people behind the study, told CNN that this “new development could be life changing for those who have suffered devastating injuries like brain stem stroke” and more.

The technology could allow anyone currently paralyzed to write using just their brain activity and while that’s exciting for a number of reasons, the team told CNN that there’s a lot of work to be done before this technology is available to the mass public. They said it will probably take years, but hopefully not decades, for that time to come.

For more about brain interfaces, read about how Elon Musk’s brain company, Neuralink, plans to make a cyborg monkey play “mind pong” and then read about how one of the co-founders of Neuralink says they could build a Jurassic Park if they wanted to. Check out IGN’s list of the top 25 best Sci Fi movies after that.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes. 

It’s no secret that actor Dave Bautista really, really wants to play Marcus Fenix in a Gears of War movie, but it may not be entirely clear just how bad he wants it. In an interview with Collider, Bautista says that he turned down an offer from Universal to play a role in a Fast & The Furious movie in order to promote a Gears of War adaptation.

“I don’t make any pretense about it,” Bautista said. “I had a chance to get a meeting at WB, they were talking to me about this and that and I said ‘hey, let’s talk about Bane.’ That happened to me one other time in my career. They wanted to talk to me about Fast and the Furious, and I said ‘I’m not interested, let’s talk about [Gears of War character] Marcus Fenix.’”

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Bautista later added that he thinks Universal was “a little put off,” but that he didn’t regret taking his shot.

“I don’t mean to offend anybody,” Bautista said. “I’m not putting down anything else, I’m just saying [Gears] is way more interesting to me. I don’t want to pretend like I’m actually interested in something I’m not when there’s something I’m actually really excited about that you guys have under control. ‘Would you consider me for that?’ I don’t think there’s any harm in that. I’m not trying to step on anybody else’s toes, I’m just saying like this is what I love and I’m seriously passionate about this. ‘I can do a good job for you guys on this.’”

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The Gears of War movie has wallowed in development hell since 2007, with writers coming and going from the project until ownership transferred over to Universal. Bautista has lobbied for the position of the COG soldier Marcus Fenix for so long that the actor was actually added to Gears 5 as a playable multiplayer character.

While the Gears of War movie shows no recent signs of life, it can’t be understated that turning down a Fast & The Furious job simply to badger Universal again is no small decision. The Fate of the Furious surpassed $1 billion at the box office as of mid-2017, and F9 stars one of Bautista’s old WWE coworkers John Cena in a starring role as the brother of Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto.

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Kathryn Hahn is jumping from one mystery into another as the WandaVision actress is the latest star to join the cast of Knives Out 2. This was first reported by Deadline.

As with the other cast members — which now includes Edward Norton, Dave Bautista, and Janelle Monáe — Hahn’s role is being kept a secret. The only character whose identity we know is Daniel Craig’s who will return as gentleman detective Benoit Blanc.

Rian Johnson is set to return as writer and director for the Knives Out sequel for Netflix. The streaming service paid over $400 million for the rights to the next two Knives Out movies, meaning there will be another one after this.

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Hahn is a critically-acclaimed actress but many will recognize her as Agatha from Disney Plus’ WandaVision MCU series. While we won’t divulge spoilers here, Hahn’s character in WandaVision was more than she appears at first, and that could be the same case for her character in Knives Out 2.

Johnson has said a Knives Out sequel will be focused on a new mystery with new characters, so don’t expect any of the actors from the first film to appear again. This includes stars from the first Knives Out like Chris Evans and Ana de Armas.

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As the cast for Knives Out 2 continues to grow, production is scheduled to begin filming this summer in Greece. Check out IGN’s full WandaVision review (mostly spoiler-free) for our thoughts on the last mystery Hahn found herself in.

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Matt T.M. Kim is IGN’s News Editor.

(Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for IFP)

Late on Monday afternoon, a Mass Effect: Legendary Edition code arrived in my email inbox. As of this writing, that’s about 65 hours ago – which would be roughly enough time to hurriedly play through two of its three large-scale RPGs if you did literally nothing else. I decided not to do that, because by now my only opinion on their quality would be that they are not as good as sleeping, eating, or seeing my family once in a while.

Put another way, I haven’t had enough time with them yet to write anything close to a review. My early impressions based on the first 10 or so hours haven’t revealed much about the updated original Mass Effect that you haven’t seen or heard previously: it looks much better than it did 14 years ago and the writing and voice performances are still wonderful but the human facial animations (and running) don’t compare to modern motion capture tech; combat holds up pretty well even though it’s not as smooth as the latter games (switching weapon mods on the fly is still a pain); the Mako is still bouncy but not ridiculously bouncy. I’ve had a few minor bugs but nothing too disruptive yet.

Here’s 21 minutes of footage to give you an idea:

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Off the cuff, I can say that revisiting the story after 14 years has been great – I’d forgotten how quickly things get going, the original crew is introduced, and we’re off on a hunt for the secrets of the Protheans and the Reapers. But there’s still a long journey ahead and it’s not meant to be played in one long forced march, so it’s going to take a while before I can get my head around all of it for a review. (Whether or not that’ll take the form of a full playthrough of all three games and their DLC or some abridged version of that I still don’t know, but I’ll make sure to be very clear on what I did and didn’t play in my final review.) So, wish me luck, and I’ll see you on the other side.

In the meantime, we’ve got a ton of Mass Effect content to shoot directly into your veins/eyeballs (your preference), including a rundown of the gameplay changes made in the Legendary Editions, a recap of the entire Mass Effect story so far, and our reviews of every prior BioWare game to date. We’re also working on a full performance review video from IGN Graphics Wizard Destin Legarie to do a deep-dive into all the improvements EA has made to the trilogy, so keep an eye out for that!

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A new generation of laptops with Intel Rocket Lake processors and RTX 30 series video cards have popped up at Newegg. Most of them are slated to be released this month and the initial crop of laptops could ship as soon as next week. Currently there aren’t any RTX 3060 laptops available, only 3070 and 3080 variants. These are some of the most powerful gaming laptops we’ve seen. The RTX 3070 performs better than the previous champ, the RTX 2080 SUPER, and the RTX 3080 is even faster than that. Check out all the options below.

Intel Rocket Lake RTX 3070 Gaming Laptops

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Intel Rocket Lake RTX 3080 Gaming Laptops

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More Intel Rocket Lake RTX 30 Series Gaming Laptops

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A Really Good Dell RTX 30 Series Gaming Laptop Deal

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Koei Tecmo has found a good deal of success of late with its licensed Dynasty Warriors spinoffs, ranging from Dragon Quest to The Legend of Zelda. More are undoubtedly coming, but what next? Koei Tecmo’s president has a couple ideas.

Speaking with TheGamer, Koei Tecmo President Hisashi Koinuma talked about the games he would personally love to see as a subject for a Warriors (also known as “musou”) game. “Mario and Star Wars are two great series that come to mind. Unfortunately, we haven’t had the opportunity to collaborate with these IP yet.”

Koinuma didn’t elaborate on why he picked those franchises in particular, but with a little imagination, it’s not hard to envision a Mario Warriors or Star Wars Jedi Warriors. Both franchise feature all the ingredients of a great musou game: distinctive settings, huge casts, and interesting settings.

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Koei Tecmo’s most recent foray was Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, which we called a welcome trip back to the world of Breath of Wild. While it missed some characterization opportunity, it was still a blast from start to finish, our review said.

Koei Tecmo has developed a strong relationship with Nintendo in general. Aside from Warriors versions of Fire Emblem and Zelda, it played a large part in the development of Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

As for Star Wars, the opportunity exists now that Disney is looking to partner with other developers outside of EA. It’s all too easy to imagine slicing through hordes of Battle Droids and Stormtroopers as Luke Skywalker or Mace Windu.

For now, Koei Tecmo is focused on the more traditional side of the Warriors series. Its next release is Samurai Warriors 5, which is due out on PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch next month.