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Yakuza: Like A Dragon

In this time of social distancing and spending a lot more of your day at home, chances are you’re watching all kinds of movies and TV shows, including plenty of action and horror titles. It definitely seems like the plethora of streaming services available were made for this moment in time. As you plot out your next binge, though, you’re in luck. The decision has already been made. It’s time to stop everything you’re doing and watch the new TV series Upload on Amazon Prime Video.

Upload is a comedy from The Office creator Greg Daniels and is set in a future that feels a little too possible. When you’re about to die, you have the option of having your consciousness “uploaded” into a digital world that is magnificent–on the surface.

The show follows Nathan (Robbie Amell), who meets an untimely death in a car accident and finds himself uploaded into the most lavish of digital afterlives, thanks to his well-off girlfriend footing the bill. From there, the series explores everything from how dependent humans have become on technology to microtransactions, which have become prevalent in the gaming industry. Yes, while you can buy your way into a better digital heaven, once you’re there you should expect to be financially gouged for practically everything, while also being inundated with ads. It’s like The Good Place if it were run by Google.

While that alone would be the basis of a very funny show, that’s not enough for Upload. This series is equal parts comedy, murder mystery, slow-burning romance, and social commentary. These elements shouldn’t necessarily work together as well as they do in Upload, but they fit perfectly like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, thanks in large part to the world that’s built over the course of Season 1’s 10 episodes.

It’s a world where people rely on computers to do almost everything, from driving their cars to printing their food. It’s a vision of the future that feels hauntingly real. However, it’s one that Upload uses to point out just how ridiculous letting technology do everything can be. Yes, there are plenty of funny moments, whether it’s a glitch in the code of the digital afterlife that makes everyone appear as a blocky Minecraft-style character or seeing rideshare company Lyft replaced with Byke, which is essentially a self-driving bicycle company.

Still, while there’s plenty of fun to be had at the expense of this version of the future, it’s coupled with what could easily be considered warnings about going down this potential road. Practically everything in this future is controlled by tech conglomerates, many of which have banded together to create bigger corporations with more power, like Google Samsung. Even the digital afterlife is run by corporations with seemingly very little oversight, which is a scary thought when these companies control practically every aspect of your existence–both before and after you die.

How do romance and a murder mystery find their way into this story? The show has so much to say about technology and electronic devices, that it’s up to Nathan and those around him to ground the story–from his new digital best friend (Kevin Bigley) to the rich girlfriend he left behind (Allegra Edwards).

As Nathan adjusts to his new normal and the unexpected limitations that come with it, questions about his former life begin to rise, giving way to a bigger mystery. Then, while the pieces of this that subplot reveal themselves, Nathan begins to bond with Nora (Andy Allo), his living customer service representative. The relationship that grows between them is by no means a traditional romance, especially given one of them is dead and no longer exists on the physical plane. And yet, it’s one of the most genuine relationships you’re going to find on TV.

Upload juggles so many different balls at any given moment that it would have been understandable if it partially lost its way. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened (here’s looking at you, Riverdale). In the end, though, it doesn’t fall into that trap. The various story threads are all given the appropriate room to grow and become more engaging, resulting in a truly special show.

With so many TV series being released practically daily, it’s easy to miss when something truly special arrives. I’m here to tell you that Upload is that something. So what are you waiting for? Open up the Amazon Prime Video app and start watching it now.

Nintendo shared its financial earnings report for the end of its fiscal year 2020. Alongside the earnings, the company has updated its list of top 10 best-selling Switch games, revealing the latest sales figures for some of the system’s biggest first-party titles.

The sole new addition to the list is Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Despite launching just 11 days prior to the end of the fiscal year, the game skyrocketed to seventh place on Nintendo’s top 10 list, moving more than 11 million copies in that time frame. Since then, that number has risen to 13.41 million, eclipsing the lifetime sales of the series’ previous best-selling entry, New Leaf, in just six weeks.

The rest of the list remains unchanged from Nintendo’s last financials report, although all have hit new milestones. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe remains Switch’s best-selling first-party game at nearly 25 million copies sold, while Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is approaching 19 million. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey are effectively tied at 17.41 million each, and Splatoon 2 has now crossed the 10 million mark.

Pokemon Sword and Shield, which previously had the fastest launch of any Switch games prior to Animal Crossing, also continue to sell well. The titles have moved a combined 17.37 copies, while the 2018 Pokemon games, Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee, have sold nearly a combined 12 million. Rounding out Nintendo’s top 10 is Super Mario Party at 10.10 million and New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe at 6.60 million. You can see the full list below.

Elsewhere in the earnings report, Nintendo revealed that the Switch has now surpassed 55 million units. Over 21 million of these sales came in the last fiscal year alone. The console saw a significant boost the week Animal Crossing launched. Despite these strong sales, however, Nintendo is limiting its Switch forecast throughout the next financial year because of the unpredictable effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nintendo Switch Best-Selling First-Party Games (As Of March 31, 2020)

1. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe — 24.77 million
2. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate — 18.84 million
3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — 17.41 million
4. Super Mario Odyssey — 17.41 million
5. Pokemon Sword / Shield — 17.37 million
6. Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu / Eevee — 11.97 million
7. Animal Crossing: New Horizons — 11.77 million (13.41 million as of May 7)
8. Splatoon 2 — 10.13 million
9. Super Mario Party — 10.10 million
10. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe — 6.60 million

Microsoft debuted several Xbox Series X games during its latest Inside Xbox presentation. Now as developers and retailers are starting to follow by openly acknowledging the revealed games, we may have gotten a hint of what the box art for Xbox Series X games will look like.

The box comes from a placeholder for Yakuza: Like a Dragon, which was confirmed as a Series X game compatible with Smart Delivery. Not long after, a piece of placeholder box art appeared online with a few notable visual elements.

For the most part, the box looks similar to that of Xbox One games, even including the green stripe across the top of the spine. But that bar simply says Xbox as opposed to Xbox Series X, which fits with Microsoft’s prior suggestion that this generation will simply go by the one-word “Xbox” name and Series X is more of a model name.

Similarly, a visual element just below that notes that the game is for Xbox One and Series X, and that it uses the Smart Delivery feature. That could suggest that releases will come on a single disc, which will just install the correct version onto your hardware. Finally, a conspicuously large visual element on the right side says “Optimized for Series X.”

The rest of the box is obviously a placeholder, simply showing the game’s logo against a black background. And it’s very possible that any or all of these visual elements won’t actually appear on Series X games, or will be altered before games start releasing this fall.

But the artwork gives some insight as to how Microsoft could be attempting to brand its next-gen games as it moves into an era where the lines become much fuzzier. Microsoft has already promised that for the first year or two, all of its first-party games will work across the Xbox family–which has the side-effect of keeping the Series X from actually having any exclusives to call its own.

Fanatical has revealed its latest Pick-And-Mix bundle, the Platinum Collection, which lets you choose a number of Steam games from a curated selection and receive them in a nicely discounted package. The latest collection of PC games includes some excellent titles, too. The Surge, Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and Just Cause 3 XXL Edition are all a part of the special promotion, as are popular PC games Mist Survival, Flashing Lights: Police Fire EMS, and Jalopy.

The first discount tier is three games for $10, the second is four games for $13.29, and the third is five games for $16.59. Any extra games on top of this will go for their regular price until they reach the first discount tier. For example, you can add eight total games, with the first five selling for $16.59 and the other three for $10.

One of the best games in the promotion is The Surge. GameSpot’s The Surge review scored the game a 7/10, praising its brutal combat and dystopian, cyberpunk world as well as the “flow of new and creative ideas [that] keep the game feeling fresh throughout.” It’s a game about learning the patterns of your enemy and mastering your combat abilities to defeat them.

There are also a number of great Square Enix-published games include in the sale. Sleeping Dogs is an open-world game like Grand Theft Auto with a surprisingly deep martial arts combat system, while Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is an immersive stealth game that lets you choose how to approach almost every situation, from shooting everyone in a room, sneaking by them, hacking into computers, or finding new paths via air ducts and more.

Fanatical’s latest bundle is a great deal, but if you’re interested in even more excellent offers, there are a lot of digital game sales this week for the PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. Developers and publishers are also giving away free games you can claim right now in the hopes of encouraging people to stay at home during the current pandemic. Additionally, you can check out our guide to the best TV, movies, and games for social distancing if you’re looking for even more suggestions.

The Platinum Collection: Pick-And-Mix bundle

3 games for $10 | 4 games for $13.29 | 5 games for $16.59

WWE is expanding its unscripted TV series catalog for 2020. Currently, the company has Total Divas and Total Bellas on E! and Miz and Mrs. on USA. Now, the sports entertainment giant is launching a new show on A&E, which is being developed under the working title The Ques. Additionally, A&E made two more announcements for upcoming series.

Following in the footsteps of other shows like American Pickers, Pawn Stars, or the new Disney+ series Prop Culture, the official synopsis for The Quest for Lost WWE Treasures reads, “WWE’s Stephanie McMahon and Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque, will lead a team of collectors, WWE superstars, and legends as they investigate, negotiate, bid and travel across the country to hunt down and reclaim some of the most elusive WWE collectibles.”

The show will give viewers a unique look at historical items from WWE’s past along with taking them into the WWE Archives, which holds thousands of items from WWE’s history including PPV ring signs and plenty of Undertaker coffins. The first season will consist of 10, one-hour long episodes.

The Quest for Lost WWE Treasures joins the previously announced Biography specials, which will showcase WWE superstars Randy Savage, Roddy Piper, Booker T, Steve Austin, and Shawn Michaels.

Additionally, A&E renewed it’s unscripted series Live PD which follows law enforcement agencies across the United States, live. The network ordered an additional 160 episodes, as the series celebrates its 300th episode in June.

Finally, the new series What’s It Worth? Live has been ordered for eight, two-hour episodes. The live show is hosted by comedian Jeff Foxworthy as he give viewers the opportunity to purchase rare and interesting items from other people. Foxworthy will be joined by experts that will give viewers more details about the items and their worth. What’s It Worth? Live sounds a lot like Antiques Roadshow meets Pawn Stars.

May 2020’s Inside Xbox event has come and gone, and while it did deliver Xbox Series X news and some gameplay, it didn’t turn out to be what anyone was expecting. Microsoft positioned this as the gameplay reveal for third-party games, with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla spotlighted as the big-ticket item. The stream’s new Valhalla “gameplay” trailer was seemingly devoid of any standard gameplay footage, and the entire event was not the showcase we were hoping for.

The hunger for next-gen news and details remains at a fever pitch, and Microsoft did appropriately caveat this event in one key way, telling us we’d be waiting until July’s event to see Halo Infinite and other first-party games. But we were still expecting some normal gameplay from the third-party games on display, including Valhalla, which didn’t see any in its reveal last week. This was a chance for Microsoft to beat Sony to the punch and showcase what next-gen games will look like. Instead, almost everything shown had the air of cinematic trailers. Even if the footage was “in-engine,” there wasn’t much throughout the broadcast that resembled what you’d see if your hands were actually on the controller.

There are, of course, some challenging obstacles to overcome. Games are being showcased on livestreamed video feeds that are, generally, sub-4K quality, when a 4K source and display would be the optimal way to showcase these games’ improved visuals. And developers around the world are now working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially placing further restrictions on what could be assembled for the purposes of an event like this.

But these showcases did little to sell the next-gen experience. There was a reference to the ability to play Dirt 5 at 4K and 60 FPS or 120 FPS, but those are difficult things to show in a stream. And these cinematic-style trailers don’t allow you to see what a game truly looks like moment-to-moment. That hurdle aside, with how great some existing games look on Xbox One X and PS4 Pro (not to mention a ray tracing-capable PC), glamour shots of these upcoming games didn’t necessarily scream “next-gen,” because they’re going to be compared with current-gen cutscenes. And some of what we saw would not have looked totally out of place on the console you might already have at home.

But if this is what Microsoft had to show, it should have done a much better job of managing expectations from the get-go. When you say “gameplay,” that conjures the thought of gameplay demonstrations (whether live or pre-recorded), not slickly cut videos that are hard to distinguish from cinematic trailers.

A leap in visual fidelity is not all that Xbox Series X provides. The Quick Resume feature that lets you bounce between multiple games sounds great, but that’s the sort of thing you need to experience to really appreciate. Ditto for the steps being taken to reduce game install sizes.

But there are other advancements coming, namely the reduction or elimination of load times. Microsoft and Sony have both spoken about this again and again, touting what the solid-state drives of the Xbox Series X and PS5 will allow for. The ability to fast-travel from one point in a game world to a faraway spot with minimal or no loading sounds great, and it is a feature you could demonstrate in a video to some extent–yet this is not something the Inside Xbox stream made any attempt to highlight. As a result, arguably the best next-gen demo to date remains the Marvel’s Spider-Man load time comparison.

In an interview with GameSpot last year, Phil Spencer told us that “playability is probably the bigger focus for us this generation. How fast do [games] load? Do I feel like I can get into the game as fast as possible and while it’s playing? How does it feel? Does this game both look and feel like no other game that I’ve seen? That’s our target.” Just prior to Inside Xbox, we spoke with Xbox director of program management Jason Ronald, who said of the move to an SSD, “We were at the upper bounds of what’s possible with the rotational drive. This [SSD] unlocks huge opportunities and it’s going to be an area ripe for innovation.” And yet, from watching Inside Xbox, you got very little sense of what kind of other improvements the CPU–a serious bottleneck for many developers on current-gen consoles–or the other new hardware will allow for.

There’s still plenty of time to effectively communicate all of this, but Microsoft has put itself in an awkward position by not being more upfront about what this event would entail. That’s demonstrated in the severe downvoting that many of these videos are seeing on YouTube, where commenters are specifically lamenting the use of the word “gameplay.” Sony also received flak for Mark Cerny’s extremely technical-minded PS5 presentation earlier this year, but the company had not promised to show games running as part of its event. A sizzle reel is all well and good, but this first look from Microsoft has shown the critical importance of properly setting expectations.