As the November release for Cyberpunk 2077 draws closer, developer CD Projekt Red has prepared the third part in its Night City Wire series. The new episode will be streamed today, September 18, at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET and will focus on Night City and the gangs who inhabit it.
How To Watch Cyberpunk 2077 Night City Wire
You’ll be able to watch the latest Cyberpunk 2077 Night City Wire video in several different places, including the official CD Projekt Red Twitch channel. You can also check the developer’s official YouTube channel, or to make it even easier for you, we’ve embedded the stream below.
Click To Unmute
Cyberpunk 2077 Night City Wire Episode 3 – With Pre and Post Show
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
The first Night City Wire episode revealed Cyberpunk 2077’s districts and the Braindance gameplay mechanic that allows players to hack into the psyches of various characters and explore their memories. A new anime adaptation called Cyberpunk 2077: Edgerunners was also announced, which will be produced by Kill La Kill’s Studio Trigger for Netflix.
August’s second episode revealed more of the various weapons that players will be able to wield, which include sub-machine guns with tracer rounds, sniper rifles that can pierce through barriers, and thermal katanas that can slice through enemies. Cyberpunk 2077 will launch on November 19 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, and will include a free next-gen upgrade to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
For more on Cyberpunk 2077, be sure check out our hub where you can get the latest news on the game as well as deep dives into the lore of the sci-fi RPG series.
The Department of Commerce has ordered that downloads for mobile apps TikTok and WeChat be banned in the US from Sunday.
American users will not be able to download the apps after September 20. Those with the apps already downloaded will still be able to use them, but they won’t be able to access any future updates for TikTok or WeChat, which may damage their functionality.
The apps will be fully banned and made illegal on November 12 if President Trump’s security concerns with TikTok and WeChat are not resolved by that date. Oracle was recently negotiating to become TikTok’s ‘trusted tech partner’ in the U.S. – if that deal goes ahead, the ban can be reversed.
You can read the full release from the Department of Commerce here, in which Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross details the reasons behind the order. According to Ross, this order has been issued to “safeguard the national security of the United States.”
“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has demonstrated the means and motives to use these apps to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and the economy of the U.S. Today’s announced prohibitions when combined, protect users in the U.S. by eliminating access to these applications and significantly reducing their functionality.”
This move follows Executive Orders signed by Trump in August which sought to block TikTok and WeChat’s operations in the US if they were not sold by their Chinese-owned parent companies, ByteDance and Tencent.
Nintendistas (Brazilian Nintendo fans) were delighted with some long-awaited news on August 19th. On its official Twitter account, Nintendo of America announced that the Switch is coming soon to Brazil – Nintendo’s first official release in the country since it ceased operations in the country back in 2015.
The official launch of the Nintendo Switch in Brazil arrives today, September 18, 2020, for the suggested price of 2,999 real – which is equivalent to about $567 USD. The announcement shared on social media was accompanied by an image of Switch’s standard version, leading fans to correctly guess that this model would be the only one to arrive in the country at launch. That information was confirmed by Bill van Zyll, Nintendo’s General Manager of Latin America, who added that the Pro Controller and Joy-Con will also arrive at launch, and that the Lite model will follow in 2021.
Greetings to all the Brazilian Nintendo fans out there! We’re excited to announce that #NintendoSwitch will be coming soon to Brazil!
How did Brazilians have access to Nintendo products up until now?
While there is a large gray market for Switch consoles and a system to buy games digitally, it has been five years since Nintendo stopped official sales of its products in Brazil. Upon ceasing its operations in 2015, the company stated that its model of distribution in the country had become unsustainable due to “challenges in the local business environment”, such as “high import taxes”. Because of that, Nintendo fans in Brazil missed out on physical editions of major releases such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Pokémon Sun & Moon, as well as the New Nintendo 2DS XL.
Nintendo first established a distribution model in Brazil back in 1993, when the company established a partnership with Gradiente and Estrela – which merged to become Playtronic. The enterprise assembled consoles domestically – to avoid high import tax payments – and translated printed materials, like manuals and packaging. At that time, clone NES and SNES consoles were so popular that the official releases struggled to outsell the fake ones.
For more than two decades, Nintendo maintained some of its logistics in the country, changing its local distributors from time to time. Distribution was cut short for two years during the GameCube era, between 2004 and 2006 – however, the biggest gap started when the company ceased its contract with Gaming do Brasil in 2015.
For the past five years up to 2020, the only way that Brazilians could buy Nintendo products was through the gray market. Retailers and specialized stores had to directly import consoles, peripherals and games and, because of that, there weren’t fixed prices and some products had prices considered excessive – a gray market Switch would sell for up to 4000 real ($756 USD). Many players found buying abroad or importing themselves a more viable option.
Nintendo’s booth at Brasil Game Show 2019.
Indeed, these gray market prices make the new official price of 2,999 real seem much more reasonable. For comparison, this is the same price as the PlayStation 4 Pro in Brazil; the standard PS4 sells for 2,000-2,500 real, about $378-$470 USD.
It was only in 2018 that Nintendo took steps towards being closer to South America’s regional market again. During that year’s E3, the company revealed exclusively to IGN Brasil that it was planning to launch Loja Nintendo, a website from which fans can buy download codes of Switch games using local currency. Loja Nintendo has since had its catalog expanded and is now releasing games more quickly, in addition to offering pre-sale services. However, the catalog does not include all titles released on the Switch, and games like Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Spiritfarer are not available.
At Brasil Game Show (BGS) 2018, the company announced a partnership with a local retail store to sell Nintendo Switch prepaid game cards, for those players who had imported a console. Nintendo also had a booth at BGS 2019, which further stoked the hopes of fans.
Brazilian fans still don’t have a fully functional eShop – the app includes no browsable catalog or any other feature besides redeeming codes for digital versions of games.
Other issues that Nintendistas face are related to technical assistance. Nintendo has only one certified repair center in the whole country, which is located in the city of São Paulo. Therefore, if a player wants their Joy-Con drift problem fixed, they will have to send it or come to the city themselves.
Nintendo’s booth at Brasil Game Show 2019.
How will the Switch arrive in Brazil?
According to van Zyll, when the Switch is officially released Nintendo will keep its operating system “simple” at first. The company will be working with two distributors – Rcell and Ingram Micro – as well as big retailers such as Lojas Americanas, Magazine Luiza and Submarino. This pared-down approach is intended to avoid the problems that led Nintendo to exit Brazil back in 2015.
“We tried different approaches that seemed to be right at that time [2015], but we ran into different issues or different challenges in each case,” says van Zyll. “So, what we did this time is we took another step back and we really looked at it and we went with a model which is simple, direct, straightforward and something that we think will work and something that we think we can build on.”
At this point, the company still has a long way to go to fully establish itself in Brazil. Economist Roberto Dumas believes that the reactivation of Nintendo’s operation in the country will cause an overall improvement in customer’s lives, but he also has words of caution.
“One thing is for certain: This will improve fans’ well-being; otherwise, there would be no reason,” he says. “Brazil is a great consumerist market: 68% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is made by domestic consumption. We love to spend money, and Nintendo most certainly has noticed that people are buying more of their products during the pandemic, so they must have decided to not lose this good opportunity to invest here. However, don’t get your hopes too high, because now is not the time to establish a robust operation.”
Nintendo’s booth at Brasil Game Show 2019.
Why now?
So, why return to Brazil now, five years after exiting the market and during a global pandemic? Van Zyll tells us, “This has been in the works for a while. This did not happen overnight. We’ve been working at this for some time, really, for years, and we took our steps, our deliberate steps, which is how Nintendo works.”
According to the executive, the Brazilian market is very important for Nintendo. He explains that “Brazil is one of the top 10 economies in the world, it has 210 million consumers, and it’s the largest gaming market in Latin America.”
Van Zyll also mentions the passion of the Brazilian fans, the Nintendistas: “While we’ve been out there working and trying to get ready for this, we’ve continually heard from the Nintendistas. And I’ll tell you, every time I go to Brazil, I have a chance to talk to people and just that the passion, the love that people have for Nintendo it is just so… it really hits you! It’s quite an experience. I think it’s really unique.”
He adds: “Please don’t confuse us getting late to Brazil as Nintendo not caring, because we absolutely do.”
If you’re planning on pre-ordering a Playstation 5 this fall, odds are Spider-Man: Miles Morales is one of the first games on your priority list. This spinoff to 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man puts Miles in the spotlight, as he defends his new home of Harlem from a destructive conflict between the evil energy corporation Roxxon and the brilliant supervillain known as The Tinkerer.
If you’ve read many Spider-man comics or followed the MCU, you may be familiar with The Tinkerer by now. But as the latest Spider-Man: Miles Morales trailer shows, the game is delivering a very different take on this classic Marvel villain. Read on for a full breakdown of The Tinkerer’s comic book origins and how the character has been portrayed in Marvel’s animated shows, movies and video games. The topics covered here include:
It’s not easy being a supervillain in the Marvel Universe, especially if you don’t have superhuman powers, magical abilities or a mutant gene to level the playing field. How are you supposed to rob a bank when it seems like Spider-Man or Daredevil are always around the corner? Opportunistic villains have two options. They can either set up shop somewhere other than New York City (crazy talk!) or they can turn to The Tinkerer for help.
The Tinkerer is the secret force behind many of the technological villains of the Marvel U. This brilliant inventor has built a lucrative business out of designing gadgets, battle-suits and other weapons capable of giving ordinary criminals a fighting chance against costumed heroes. Even many of Spider-Man’s greatest foes, from Mysterio to Kingpin, have relied on Tinkerer’s services in their futile efforts to squash the pesky bug.
The Tinkerer is among Spider-Man’s oldest foes, both in terms of his physical age and his franchise debut. The character first appeared in 1963’s The Amazing Spider-Man #2, the same issue that introduced future Mysterio Quentin Beck to Spidey’s rogues gallery. That also makes him one of many characters created by the iconic duo of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.
A brilliant scientist and inventor, Phineas Mason used to live a humble existence as the owner of a repair shop called Phineas’ Fix-It. But after growing disgusted with the ever-increasing number of reckless superheroes and Spider-Man in particular, Mason decided to turn to a life of crime. His repair shop is now a front for his real business – designing and upgrading weapons for many of New York’s worst super-criminals.
To draw a comparison to Game of Thrones, The Tinkerer is sort of the Iron Bank of the Marvel Universe. He doesn’t normally get his hands dirty in the various hero vs. villain conflicts playing out across the globe. He simply sits back and profits from those conflicts. Some might argue he’s not even a villain so much as an amoral opportunist. Even after becoming The Tinkerer, Mason has maintained a healthy relationship with his law-abiding, secret agent son Rick. He’s even a tragic figure in some ways, as he’s been forced to mourn the deaths of his wife, his son (same son whose status has been retconned over the years!) and his grandson.
That said, other stories have painted The Tinkerer in a darker light. For example, 2004’s Secret War revealed Mason is secretly bankrolled by Latveria (Doctor Doom’s kingdom), with then-Latverian president Lucia von Bardas hoping to destabilize the U.S. by increasing the number of technological supervillains and waging covert acts of terrorism.
The Tinkerer’s Powers and Abilities
The Tinkerer has no innate superhuman powers, but he is an incredibly gifted engineer and inventor. His creations might not rival those of Tony Stark or Reed Richards, but they have allowed dozens of criminals to commit crimes and stand toe-to-toe with heroes like Spider-Man.
Mason rarely uses his own inventions, preferring simply to sell them to the highest bidder. But he has been known to protect himself from backstabbing buyers who try to cheat their way out of paying for his wares. Mason often builds fail-safe systems into his weapons, allowing him to sabotage his own work whenever it’s turned against him.
The Tinkerer’s Most Nefarious Inventions
A great many Marvel villains owe their advanced weapons and armor to the skills of The Tinkerer. Over the years, Mason has either built or upgraded weapons for Scorpion, Grim Reaper, Stilt-Man, Rocket Racer, Blizzard, Beetle, Grizzly and many others. He’s also worked in the employ of the Kingpin.
However, a few other inventions really stand out. In The Tinkerer’s very first appearance, he joined forces with Quentin Beck to create a complex, convincing illusion that New York City was being invaded by aliens. After Spider-Man’s very brief tenure driving the infamous Spider-Mobile, Kingpin hired The Tinkerer to recover the car and turn it against its former owner.
Even Spidey’s own gadgets aren’t safe from the Tinkerer.
The Tinkerer even acted as a middleman when Eddie Brock was dying of cancer and sought to auction off the Venom symbiote to the highest bidder.
Perhaps Mason’s most impressive accomplishment, however, is one he used for his own personal benefit. Mason built a lifelike robotic suit and created the fake identity Hophni Mason, pretending to be his own brother. Adopting the nickname The Mason and pretending to be a more benevolent inventor, the disguised Tinkerer began working with various heroes and secretly cataloging their weaknesses for his own ongoing research.
The Ultimate Universe’s Tinkerer
Like many villains, The Tinkerer received a substantial overhaul when he was introduced in Marvel’s Ultimate Universe imprint in the early 2000s. In fact, Phineas Mason and The Tinkerer are two separate characters in this alternate universe. Mason is depicted as a much younger character – a member of a government-sponsored think-tank full of young scientific prodigies.
The actual Tinkerer role is instead filled by a character named Elijah Stern. Stern is an ex-employee of Roxxon who turns on his former boss after being fired. He’s later pressed into working for SHIELD, though that doesn’t stop him from trying to kill Spider-Man or helping Norman Osborn outfit the Sinister Six with new weapons. Ultimately, Stern is interrogated and murdered by the Prowler, uncle to the new Spider-Man, Miles Morales.
It’s important to single out this version of The Tinkerer since he may wind up influencing Insomniac’s version of the character as much as the classic Tinkerer. After all, the plot of Spider-Man: Miles Morales deals heavily with the conflict between Roxxon and Tinkerer’s army, suggesting this character may also be a jilted former employee. And don’t forget that before Miles became a resident of Marvel’s core comic book universe, he made his debut in the Ultimate Universe as the heir to Peter Parker.
TV: Despite his long history in the Spider-Man comics, it took a surprisingly long time for The Tinkerer to appear in any of the numerous Spider-Man animated series. He didn’t show up until 2008’s Spectacular Spider-Man (voiced by Thom Adcox-Hernandez), which depicted him as a much younger inventor who worked for villains like Mysterio and Tombstone. Tinkerer also plays a recurring role in the current Marvel’s Spider-Man series (voiced by Aaron Abrams), where he’s battled Team Spidey both alone and in league with Scorpion.
Movies: Tinkerer also made his live-action debut in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, where he’s played by Michael Chernus. Here, Mason is shown working for the salvage company run by Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes. After Toomes loses a lucrative contract to the Tony Stark-funded Damage Control, Toomes and his employees begin running a black market business harvesting and re-purposing weapons from conflicts like the Battle of New York and Ultron’s attack on Sokovia. Mason is responsible for designing Toomes’ Vulture suit and building The Shocker’s vibrational gauntlets out of the wreckage of Crossbones’ weapons from Captain America: Civil War. While Toomes himself is imprisoned at the end of the film, Mason seemingly remains at large and will almost surely pop up elsewhere in the MCU.
Games: Tinkerer has enjoyed a much busier career in Marvel’s Spider-Man video games, even well before Spider-Man: Miles Morales arrived on the scene. The character first appeared in the Sega Master System version of 1991’s Spider-Man vs. the Kingpin. Weirdly, that sparked an ongoing trend of The Tinkerer only appearing in specific ports of certain Spider-Man games, or playing much larger roles in some versions than others. For example, he only appears in the Nintendo DS version of 2010’s Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. And while Tinkerer appears as an ally in the main version of 2008’s Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (where he builds a machine to help Spidey defeat symbiote-infected humans without killing the hosts), the PS2 and PSP versions feature a unique boss battle with Tinkerer. 2009’s Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 also features a significant role for Tinkerer. The game’s story mode is heavily inspired by both Marvel’s Secret War and Civil War comics, with the plot also drawing on the idea that Mason is colluding with Latveria’s Lucia von Bardas to arm super-terrorists. Mason is ultimately revealed to be the secret mastermind behind the superhero civil war, using it as a cover to create a mind-controlling nanite swarm known as The Fold.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales will introduce a brand new take on The Tinkerer. The biggest change this time around is that the character is a woman. A new gameplay trailer reveals the game’s plot is set a year after the events of Insomniac’s first Spider-Man game, with New York caught in the crossfire of a battle between Roxxon and The Tinkerer’s army (suggesting the game is drawing from Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man comics). The Tinkerer is shown wielding tech that could possibly be rebuilt Doctor Octopus tentacles, which would suggest the game is also drawing from the MCU version. But whether The Tinkerer is the true villain of the game or a prelude to something else, we’ll have to wait and see when the game is released alongside the Playstation 5.
Michel Ancel, the influential creator behind Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil, says he’s retiring from the games industry. He made the announcement with an Instagram video featuring a sneaky fox.
The video was Ancel’s way of saying that he’s going to be focusing on a different passion: wildlife. He says his new work will take place in an open wildlife sanctuary and will focus on educating nature-lovers.
His departure doesn’t spell doom for his current video game projects, though. He says that the development of both Wild and Beyond Good & Evil 2 have transitioned to moving on autonomously without him and the projects are going well. “Beautiful things to be seen soon,” he said.
Ancel may be known best as the creator of Rayman, which got a revival with the well-regarded Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends.
What was set to be his next project, Wild, appears closely tied with his interest in nature. The adventure game has you surviving in a harsh environment with the help of creatures like bears and eagles. It has been in development for quite some time, though, having first debuted in 2014. Meanwhile, Beyond Good & Evil 2 has been receiving semi-regular development updates, but no release target has been set.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
On a bountiful menu today is plenty of PS5 treats to sink our teeth into. The reveal of Final Fantasy 16 served as an attention grabbing starter, before a flurry of exciting middle courses in the form of Resident Evil, Deathloop and others. All rounded off by the show-stopping God of War shaped dessert followed by a mad rush to actually pre-order a console.
Nintendo also announced a couple of new Monster Hunter games for the Switch that has had Joe hungry for more, but for now he and Matt have had the chance to feast on Immortals Fenyx Rising and let you know why you should be excited. Meanwhile, Cardy continues to binge-snack on Avengers.
There’s a tasty new Endless Search this week as well, along with your nourishing feedback as always.
Remember, if you want to get in touch with the podcast, please do: [email protected].
It’ll come as no surprise to you that the subject of discussion on this week’s Generation Next is the recent PlayStation Showcase, during which Sony finally confirmed the PlayStation 5 release date, as well as prices for both versions of its console. On top of that, it showed off a number of new games to get viewers excited ahead of launch.
The reveals come following the Microsoft event, which also delivered a release date and prices for its two new Xbox consoles. If you watched the previous episode of Generation Next, you’ll know that we think that the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S are priced extremely modestly and are poised to capitalize on the low cost of entry. But how do Sony’s consoles stack up?
More importantly, how did Sony do in winning the hearts and minds of those who are interested in making the jump to the next-generation? Well, the showcase was full of ups and downs and, in the aftermath, there has been a great deal of discussion about key information that wasn’t delivered in an ideal way, if at all. Whether it’s clarity on launch titles or the messy preorder situation, the question of if Sony has done enough isn’t as easy to answer as you might think, but we’re going to try and do it.
Join Lucy, Tamoor, and Jordan as they talk through the PS5 showcase, analyze the approach Sony took, discuss key moments from the event, and drill down into what has happened since.
Beyond Good & Evil 2 will show new gameplay next year, with the most recent internal build offering “hours of gameplay and an incredible level of freedom in a seamless online sandbox”.
Following the retirement of director Michel Ancel from the games industry, senior producer Guillaume Brunier provided an update on the game, reassuring fans that the BG&E director hasn’t been directly involved in the game for some time, and explaining that the game has passed important internal milestones.
The key milestone has been a playable build of the game, which Brunier says, “proves our Space Pirate Fantasy and offers hours of gameplay and an incredible level of freedom in a seamless online sandbox, building upon the promise of our tech demos shown at E3. I’m incredibly proud of the team’s perseverance, dedication to each other and ongoing commitment to developing an amazing game.”
Along with the update, we also got a new piece of art for the game, which you can see below:
The next milestone is to show the game in action “sometime next year”. Brunier explains that he understands fans’ eagerness to hear more (especially after the game seemingly vanished), but says, “we will take the time needed to get it right. We want to go beyond the high expectations you have of us, and that we have for ourselves.” Lead studio Ubisoft Montpellier has brought on Ubisoft Paris as a partner on the game, and Brunier says the team is continuing to hire for new roles.
No announcement has been made as to who will succeed Ancel as the director of the game. Brunier made clear his appreciation for the work that the creator put in: “For years, Michel imparted his creative vision and helped us remain faithful to BG&E’s incredible universe. His uncompromising passion pushed us to redefine what was possible in crafting an expansive, multicultural, and futuristic science-fiction world. As we move forward, we are all committed to remaining true to this vision.”
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].
Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe has acquired Montreal studio Reflector Entertainment, which recently revealed its game Unknown 9: Awakening during Gamescom Opening Night Live 2020.
According to a press release, this is part of Bandai Namco’s strategy to “build Western development capabilities” as the publisher plans to develop “50% of its content outside of Japan.” Reflector Entertainment was founded in 2016 and employs 120 AAA industry veterans. The studio’s ambition is to build what it calls ‘Storyworlds,’ transmedia experiences that “people can interact with across a variety of media, including videogames, novels, podcasts, movies and more.”
The studio’s first Storyworld is Unknown 9, a “paranormal mystery” about a set of 9 immortal beings that “hold the keys to humanity’s greatest mysteries.” The story of Unknown 9 will unfold across a variety of platforms, with a novel trilogy, a scripted podcast and a comic book series available now. It’s said that this acquisition will help Reflector “deepen its transmedia vision” for the Unknown 9 project.
Unknown 9: Awakening is a 3rd-person, narrative-driven action-adventure game that will reside within this universe, and is headed to PC and next-gen consoles. If you want to check out some exclusive concept art and learn more details about the game, you can check out our interview with the developers here.
