When it comes to choosing a tablet, form factor is an important consideration. For those who like their tablets on the compact side of the equation, the iPad Mini is the device to get. This particular iPad rarely goes on sale, but right now at Amazon you can grab one for the lowest price ever regardless of which configuration you choose. The only catch is that, for most of them, you’ll need to choose “Free No-Rush Shipping” at checkout. Here’s a look at the iPad Mini deals available now.
These represent the newest model of iPad Mini, having been refreshed in 2019 after three years of languishing in update Purgatory. It was a heck of an update, too, bringing just about all of the latest iPad tech to the Mini for the first time ever.
The iPad Mini offers a gorgeous 7.9-inch Retina display, which packs tons of pixels into the smaller screen real estate. The display also features True Tone to make it match the color temperature of the light around you, something even the baseline iPad lacks.
Another place the iPad Mini has a leg up on the standard iPad is the processor. Powering the iPad Mini is the more-than-capable A12 Bionic chip, which beats the A10 chip you’ll find in the standard iPad.
You also get a home button equipped with a TouchID sensor that lets you forego entering passwords. And unlike any previous iPad Mini, this one is compatible with the Apple Pencil, making it a great device for students, artists, and anyone who likes going hands-on.
All in all, the iPad Mini is a fully capable tablet that offers virtually no drawbacks compared to its larger siblings. This is the first time the Mini has ever been nearly so feature-complete. And since you can grab one now for the lowest price it’s ever been, why not?
While you’re at it, you may want to accessorize your iPad Mini. You can save $5 off the Apple Pencil or nab a terrific deal on all of the latest models of AirPods, Apple’s popular wireless earbuds.
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Chris Reed is IGN’s shopping and commerce editor. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.
Well, E3’s canceled. It’s a phrase some have expected to have to write at some point in the last few years, but it’s unlikely anyone foresaw this reasoning behind it. But there remains the lingering feeling that, even without the COVID-19 outbreak that led us to this point, we might have been seeing similar news appearing at some point before the June event.
With Sony, Geoff Keighley, and even the show’s own creative directors pulling out ahead of the event, all did not seem well behind the scenes of gaming’s most famous expo. Now that it’s officially off, most of the gaming industry will be searching for a new way to show off the biggest upcoming releases. Depending on how well that goes, this could, quite feasibly, be the beginning of the end for E3 as we currently know it, rather than a one-year blip. Here’s how that could happen.
The most obvious immediate routes for those who were scheduled to attend E3 lie in two directions. The first is Gamescom. The German show is already the world’s biggest games event by footfall and comes with its own slate of (albeit smaller) conferences. Gamescom also has a major developer, publisher, and retailer presence – E3 has traditionally had a side-function of acting as a useful meeting space for companies, leading to future deals between them. Gamescom could provide a similarly useful space, leading to companies pivoting towards it. Set over two months back from E3, it might be seen as a safe bet in terms of the trajectory of the spread of Coronavirus, while retaining some of the sheen and prestige of an E3 announcement. It wouldn’t be hugely surprising to see a far more announcement-heavy Gamescom 2020 (should that show go ahead, of course) – particularly as Geoff Keighley’s Opening Night Live (which began last year, and is due to continue this year) has already helped galvanise Gamescom-centric announcements.
The second is to follow Nintendo’s lead, and take those announcements in-house and online. The Direct model has been successful enough for the world’s biggest console manufacturer to adopt it, and Sony’s State of Play has been joined by the likes of Xbox, Devolver, and Blizzard, who have all taken digital announcement events in their own directions. It feels likely that some of E3’s major players will now attempt to create their own schedule, with the benefit of making big announcements entirely on their own terms, and with less possibility of being drowned out by someone else’s mega-news arriving on the same day.
That comes coupled with the fact that AAA game release dates themselves have become increasingly scattershot in recent years, led by the likes of Capcom’s recent moves to January and March releases for its major games. Where E3’s June placement has always made sense for publishers teasing a lucrative Holiday release, it may be that companies begin to prefer to handle their own announcements, simply because the timing lines up more neatly with their respective releases at different times of year.
What’s truly interesting is what happens if those approaches prove successful, and perhaps more successful – at least in potential savings – than a traditional E3 announcement. E3 might have been seen as something like an industry safety blanket for some time – companies announce there just because. Removing that marketing beat from the equation might push publishers to reconsider strategies and their traditional reliance on E3 — a lot of companies may be about to realise that it’s simply better for them to handle their announcements in a different, more personalised way.
We know that E3’s organisers, the ESA, are now exploring the idea of an ‘online experience’ to replace the show, and are likely already scrambling to secure announcements, attempting to make sure that E3’s main event being canceled doesn’t equate to E3 shutting down as a whole for the year. It may already be too late — corporate E3 attendees have surely been making contingency plans for some time, and will probably move to make those a reality (placating worried potential customers) rather than wait to hash out a new plan. There’s a chance those deals have already been made with the ESA, but the organisers’ insistence that event planning would go ahead – even as E3’s host city declared a state of emergency – could well have forced some hands. It may have worked for a few ticket sales at the time, but in hindsight it may have been a step too far, forcing companies to think beyond E3.
All of which leaves E3 itself in a precarious position. It’s entirely possible that, come 2021, more companies than just Sony will see the event as something of an unnecessary formality, and make the decision to skip the event. That could leave us with either a smaller, perhaps more specialised E3, a digital-only E3 (retaining the brand and tradition, with fewer overheads), or no E3 at all.
From a fan perspective, all of this could lead to a mixed bag of results. E3 has traditionally acted as ‘game announcement Christmas’, an event the industry and fans alike flock around. The potential loss of that focal point is, apart from anything else, just a bit sad. From a more pragmatic position, the need to be a part of E3 has more than likely led to companies trying to outdo one another, leading to wilder and wilder shows and a marketing calendar that pushes for big announcements to drop under a universal deadline.
Atomising game announcements into company-specific shows could lead to a toned-down approach to game reveals – while we might see a more regular turnout of new games and new gameplay, there’s less of a pressure to simultaneously reveal a game and have it available for hands-on opportunities after the show, allowing press and, at recent E3s, consumers to form their own opinions outside of the marquee conferences. E3 was by no means a perfect event but, if it did disappear or diminish, its benefits could vanish too.
Most worrying for the ESA right now will be the fact that disappearing or diminishing is not really its decision. The future of the world’s most important gaming event lies in the hands of those who usually attend it – and the next few months will be critical in seeing how that pans out.
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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News, and he’s sad today. Follow him on Twitter.
Several Supernatural cast members are safe and sound after a recent plane scare that ended with an emergency landing en route to Las Vegas.
Cast members Jensen Ackles, Alex Calvert, Misha Collins, and Richard Speight were heading to a Supernatural convention in Las Vegas when on March 6, one of their plane’s engines exploded, as originally reported by ET Canada. Fortunately, the emergency landing was successful and nobody onboard was hurt.
Speight said that once the engine exploded, the plane started to tilt to the side in air and the cast did their best not to panic.
Q: what happened with the plane?
Richard: Jared tried to k word alcal, misha, Jensen and I. We were flying in his plane and the right engine exploded. The engine literally blew up and the plane started tilting to the side and we all tried to not panic #SPNLV#SPNVEGAS
Harvey Weinstein has been sentenced to 23 years in prison for charges of sexual assault and third-degree rape.
He will serve his sentence in a New York prison and will be registered as a sex offender. Weinstein spoke to the courtroom before his sentencing. He expressed regret for his actions, but ultimately condemned the #MeToo movement.
“I really feel remorse in this situation,” Weinstein said to the courtroom, as reported by Deadline. According to Variety, he continued, “I think men are confused about all of this…this feeling of thousands of men and women who are losing due process, I’m worried about this country.”
Deadline said the first two rows of the courtroom were filled with Weinstein’s accusers. Two of those women, Miriam Haley and Jessica Mann, were the primary accusers in the case, and both delivered statements to the judge before Weinstein’s sentencing.
Haley accused Weinstein of sexually assaulting her in his apartment in 2006. “It scarred me deeply, mentally and emotionally,” Haley said at the sentencing, according to Variety. “What he did not only stripped me of my dignity as a human being and a woman, but it crushed my confidence.”
Mann accused Weinstein of raping her while she was in an abusive relationship with the producer. “I don’t know how to explain the horrors of being raped by someone who has power,” Mann said. “The impact on the psyche is profound. Rape is not just one moment…it is forever.”
The disgraced producer — sitting in a wheelchair — reportedly apologized to both women after they spoke. Prosecutors were asking for Weinstein to serve the maximum 29 years in prison while the defense was asking for 5 years. New York Justice James Burke ultimately settled with a 23 year sentence. Weinstein was being held at Riker’s Island but is now being transported to the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
Weinstein turned himself over to authorities in May 2018, which was just three months after his movie studio, The Weinstein Company, filed for bankruptcy. Weinstein was one of Hollywood’s biggest producers. His production company released multiple films a year and has produced movies including Quentin Tarantino’s films, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Spy Kids franchise, the Scary Movie franchise and TV shows like Project Runway.
Xbox boss Phil Spencer tweeted about the change in the wake of E3 2020’s cancelation, assuring fans that the company will be revealing details about its digital showing in the coming weeks.
E3 has always been an important moment for Team Xbox. Given this decision, this year we’ll celebrate the next generation of gaming with the @Xbox community and all who love to play via an Xbox digital event. Details on timing and more in the coming weeks https://t.co/xckMKBPf9h
Microsoft was scheduled to share more details about the Xbox Series X–its next-generation console that was revealed last year, and is launching this holiday. Although Microsoft has been detailing its new hardware steadily over the past few weeks, its E3 showing was expected to have pricing news, new game reveals, and more.
E3 2020 was canceled over fears of the spread of the coronavirus, which has already led to the cancelation of GDC, SXSW, and more. Although the LACC will be empty for the show this year, the ESA expects to still hold E3 in 2021.
With E3 2020 officially canceled due to concerns over the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), Ubisoft has confirmed that it’s looking at “other options” to bring announcements directly to its fans.
Ubisoft took to Twitter to share its disappointment over E3 2020’s sudden cancellation, saying that it “fully supports” the decision the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) made. While Ubisoft has not explained what it plans to do in lieu of an E3 2020 press conference, the company said a “digital experience” may be possible.
“The health and well-being of our teams, players and partners is our top priority, so while we’re disappointed, we fully support the ESA’s decision to cancel E3 2020,” the statement reads. “E3 is and will continue to be a moment where we come together as a community and share our love of games. We’re exploring other options for a digital experience that will allow us to share all the exciting news we have planned.”
The ESA, the organization responsible for the annual trade show, said it is looking at other avenues to bring the Electronic Entertainment Expo to fans this June in the form of an “online experience.”
Despite E3 2020’s cancellation at least in the physical sense, many companies are still looking at livestreams, digital presentations, and other options to get the news out. Xbox boss Phil Spencer said the company intends to hold an “Xbox digital event,” while physical game distributor Limited Rum Games–which was also the first company to confirm its E3 2020 press conference–will still hold a presentation.
E3 2020 may not go forward as planned but the trade show isn’t closing its doors for good. The ESA plans to bring the annual event back in June 2021 for what’s supposed to be “a reimagined event that brings fans, media, and the industry together.”
E3 2020 has officially been canceled. The ESA, the company that organizes the annual gaming showcase, has confirmed it has decided to cancel this year’s show over growing concerns regarding the COVID-19 virus. While the expo proper will no longer be taking place, however, the ESA says it is looking into a possible online alternative.
In a statement, the ESA said it is “exploring options with our members to coordinate an online experience to showcase industry announcements and news in June 2020.” The organization didn’t share any more details about this possible alternative, but it says further updates will be posted on the official E3 website.
Following the news of E3 2020’s cancellation, Xbox boss Phil Spencer announced that Microsoft plans to hold an “Xbox digital event” in place of its annual E3 press conference. Ubisoft similarly announced that it is “exploring other options for a digital experience that will allow us to share all the exciting news we have planned.”
E3 has always been an important moment for Team Xbox. Given this decision, this year we’ll celebrate the next generation of gaming with the @Xbox community and all who love to play via an Xbox digital event. Details on timing and more in the coming weeks https://t.co/xckMKBPf9h
Despite E3 2020’s cancellation, the ESA still plans to hold the event next year. “We thank everyone who shared their views on reimagining E3 this year. We look forward to bringing you E3 2021 as a reimagined event that brings fans, media, and the industry together in a showcase that celebrates the global video game industry,” the organization said.
Xbox head Phil Spencer and Ubisoft have announced that both companies will be hosting digital events in place of E3, which was just cancelled.
Spencer stated on Twitter that details on the timing of this digital event will be revealed in the “coming weeks” and this new plan will be a way to “celebrate the next generation of gaming with the @Xbox community who love to play.”
Ubisoft also announced that it supports the ESA’s decision to cancel E3 2020, but that it is “exploring other options for a digital experience that will allow us to share all the exciting news we have planned, stay tuned for more!”
E3 was cancelled over concerns about the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19. The ESA has announced that it is exploring the possibility of an “online experience” to replace the show, but there is no indication whether or not Xbox will be part of this.
ESA’s statement explained their difficult decision: “After careful consultation with our member companies regarding the health and safety of everyone in our industry–our fans, our employees, our exhibitors and our longtime E3 partners–we have made the difficult decision to cancel E3 2020, scheduled for June 9-11 in Los Angeles.”
“Following increased and overwhelming concerns about the COVID-19 virus, we felt this was the best way to proceed during such an unprecedented global situation. We are very disappointed that we are unable to hold this event for our fans and supporters. But we know it’s the right decision based on the information we have today.”
The Entertainment Software Association has officially canceled E3 2020, but that doesn’t mean the conference won’t return. E3 2021 will still happen next year, but it’s going to be a little different.
“We thank everyone who shared their views on reimagining E3 this year,” the ESA said in a statement to GameSpot. “We look forward to bringing you E3 2021 as a reimagined event that brings fans, media, and the industry together in a showcase that celebrates the global video game industry.”
The language the ESA used in its statement suggests E3 2021 could move to something more focused on the video game community than it does major publisher announcements. For this year, the ESA said it could be moving to a digital format to replace the traditional event.
If the coronavirus were the ESA’s only concern, E3 2021 would be a given. However, game companies’ support for E3 had already begun to dwindle.
PlayStation did not attend E3 2019 and was already planning to skip E3 2020. Nintendo, meanwhile, shifted away from live presentations for E3 2013 and has stuck with its pre-recorded Nintendo Direct presentations ever since. Electronic Arts also stopped participating a few years ago in favor of its concurrent EA Play celebrations.
With E3 2020 potentially being replaced by online-only video presentations, it will be curious to see if publishers move to this permanently for E3 2021. The live press conference certainly has its benefits, especially when Keanu Reeves is on stage, but there are far fewer chances for technical errors when everything is recorded ahead of time. E3 2021 adopting an online-only format would also be far cheaper, though the press and players would lose out on the chance to try new games themselves. As it’s a large opportunity for business networking between developers and publishers, they would also lose out by no longer meeting face to face.
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When trying to come up with possible reasons why Bloodshot exists, it’s difficult not to descend into cynicism. This is a movie that seems designed to cash in on a dubious combination of copy-catting Marvel and DC’s successes on the big screen, and Vin Diesel‘s modest star power, which can potentially draw the same crowds who flock to each new Fast and the Furious movie (including us). And Bloodshot isn’t a completely worthless imitation–it smartly leaves a lot of the original Valiant comics’ cheesy trappings (white skin, red chest, red eyes) in the past where they belong, and it’s built on a really fun (albeit moronic) sci-fi conceit that brings with it plenty of cool visual effects and inventive action set pieces.
But those are all things we’ve seen before at the cinema, and Bloodshot does little to set itself apart from the last 25 years of superhero movies. It’s a supremely stupid movie, in the very literal sense that it rarely, if ever, makes any sense–the kind of movie that begs you over and over to simply “turn off your brain” and enjoy the machismo spectacle. But idling your brain low enough to “enjoy Bloodshot for what it is” might do permanent damage.
Vin Diesel’s Roy Garrison is a soldier who, when he’s not taking out bad guys and rescuing hostages all over the world, savors picturesque romantic getaways with his beautiful wife. Of course, things are actually a lot more complicated than that, but the movie takes a long time to get to its big “twist.” In case you want to go into this movie completely blind, I’ll mark this as a spoiler–but everything discussed here is explicitly laid out in the trailer: Garrison is actually an unknowing operative of a private paramilitary corporation that repeatedly implants him with false memories of his wife being murdered in front of him, then sets him loose on what he thinks are vendettas but are actually assassinations. They wipe him clean every time, tweaking and tuning the fabricated memories and their own performances as they prepare to sell “weaponized revenge” to the highest bidder.
On top of that, they’ve replaced Garrison’s blood with billions of “nanites,” microscopic machines that lend him superpowers and can repair any organic damage to his body in a matter of seconds. “Project Bloodshot,” as he’s dubbed, is like Wolverine on even more steroids; a meathead with a cybernetically enhanced heart of gold. Diesel is, naturally, perfect for the role, and he manages to squeeze in a dimension of vulnerability to the character that makes him likable in spite of everything.
Bloodshot’s lengthy opening act as it builds toward the reveal is almost unbearably stupid–and, admittedly, deliberately so. Once it gets there, the idiocy takes on a different tone. Bloodshot cribs liberally from a wide variety of better movies, starting out in the realm of 1992’s Van Damme and Lundgren-starring Universal Soldier, before eventually transforming into more of a knock-off MCU by way of later Fast and Furious movies, with a hint of Groundhog Day for good measure.
Diesel is surrounded by an able cast doing their best with dopey dialogue and scenarios. Eiza González, Sam Heughan, and Alex Hernandez portray the other members of Garrison’s “squad,” each with their own, fun cybernetic enhancement. González’s character KT, for example, breathes through an aperture installed in the center of her chest, rather than through her trachea and mouth.
To give you an idea of how dumb Bloodshot truly is: When, at one point, KT’s breathing implant briefly stops working, the character spends a few moments in the aftermath gasping for breath–through her mouth. That’s not even mentioning the fact that although the movie could use KT’s condition as a thin excuse to explain why she dresses almost exclusively in revealing, skin-tight crop tops, instead it just doesn’t even bother.
Guy Pearce is the man in charge who orchestrates the whole scheme, although he never really sells his character’s villainy. Siddharth Dhananjay (from Amazon’s excellent rotoscope-animated Undone) plays the chief developer behind the Bloodshot tech, though he mostly exists to have several jokes made about his apparently small penis, and so he can get one-upped by the superior hacker Wilfred Wigans, played by New Girl’s Lamorne Morris. Wigans is the source of most of the movie’s genuine laughs, and Morris at least seems like he’s having fun, even if most of his gags, like trying to speed-eat Chinese food while action scenes happen around him or talking to himself while doing generic hacking stuff, are essentially nonsequiturs that have little to do with the other characters or what’s actually going on in the movie.
Most of the characters’ motivations are, at best, unclear; at worst, they seem to actively contradict those characters’ personalities and/or stated goals. The whole movie operates under the weird conceit that there are no real consequences for anything that happens; this private group is orchestrating hits all over the world, causing large-scale destruction everywhere they go, but there’s never any discussion of collateral damage, innocent bystanders, or intervention from any form of government. Granted, that would definitely detract from the fun tone Bloodshot most often goes for, which it does occasionally achieve in isolated moments of blockbuster levity.
The nanites themselves provide plenty of fodder for cool visuals and effects. There are even some elements of body horror as Garrison sustains increasingly outlandish wounds, like getting half his face blown off, only for the nanites to swarm there and reconstruct it as we watch.
Bloodshot might not be entirely faithful to the original design of the comic book character (and I’m glad that Vin doesn’t have a big red circle in the middle of his chest), but there are some nods for fans. The nanites burn neon red when they’re doing repairs, causing Garrison’s chest to light up like a blood-tinged Iron Man. In one scene, Garrison gets covered in flour, causing him to appear ashy white, which feels perfunctory. Later, once he gains better control of the nanites, his skin turns white as if drained of blood when he’s concentrating them on specific tasks, which sometimes involves sending them out of his body entirely. How he continues to walk around when that’s happening is as much a mystery as any other choice in this movie, like how nanites that repair your flesh somehow turn you into a walking tank who takes bullets to the chest without so much as flinching.
If you’re asking these questions–as I did–you’ve already overthought Bloodshot. If Vin Diesel and a goofy sci-fi/superhero mash-up premise are enough to get your nanites pumping, then by all means, enjoy. Otherwise, Bloodshot will simply leave you cold.
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