It appears Activision intends to release even more remasters and reimaginings of classic games from its catalog. As part of the company’s earnings report today, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick confirmed we could expect more to be announced later this year.
Which games the company is looking to give the remaster treatment remains unclear. However, Activision has expressed interest around remasters for a while now, which should come as no surprise given the critical and financial success around previous releases, like Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, and the most recently released Crash Team Racing: Nitro-fueled. While we may get a remaster of another well-known Activision property, the company has made it clear that it’s also not shy about investing in new games within its most recently remastered franchises.
“When you look at our IP library, we think there’s a lot of IP in there the fans are going to want to experience again,” said Kotick during an August 2019 investor call. “I’d say stay tuned for some future announcements, but just beyond pure remasters, there are also a lot of opportunities now to innovate and think about totally new content within these IPs.”
Disney theme parks and Star Wars have a newer relationship, but it continues to grow. Last year, Galaxy’s Edge opened, immersing park-goers into a very familiar world. More recently, the Rise of the Resistance attraction opened there, taking riders on a journey as a battle between the First Order and Resistance rages all around them. In 2021, you will be able to spend a few nights staying on a spaceship with Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser.
This Star Wars adventure will be a park of Disney World in Florida, where you can spend two days and two nights living on a Starcruiser. There will be on-board activities like lightsaber training. tours of the bridge, and there’s even a land excursion to Black Spire Outpost on Batuu. The video below showcases the look and feel of this upcoming resort.
The Galactic Starcruiser site is live, showing off concept art and detailing everything that’s in the video above. “Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is a completely new type of experience,” says Ann Morrow Johnson, executive producer for Walt Disney Imagineering. “You’re going to live onboard a star cruiser…and you can get wrapped up in the larger Star Wars story.”
Galactic Starcruiser will be exclusive to Disney World in Florida, building on Galaxy’s Edge, which features the ride Smuggler’s Run and the previously mentioned Rise of the Resistance. The new Galactic Starcruiser resort will arrive in 2021.
Rockstar Games co-founder and writer of Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2, Dan Houser, is leaving the company in March. He leaves the company following an extended break that began in Spring 2019, and his departure was announced unceremoniously to say the least. Take-Two confirmed his departure in a four-sentence statement that was filed with a US regulatory body.
Take-Two has now shared a little more insight around Houser’s departure and what it means for Rockstar going forward. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick commented on the matter on an earnings call, but he only very briefly mentioned Dan Houser, and instead focused his comments on his brother Sam and the successes of Rockstar Games as a company.
“Dan Houser had been on an extended leave since early spring 2019,” Zelnick said, adding that he is grateful to Dan for his contributions and that he wishes him well going forward.
Houser, who is known to be a private person, has not made any public comment on his forthcoming departure from Rockstar.
Zelnick also pointed out that Rockstar has been led since the very beginning by Sam Houser, who remains president of the company. “It’s an extraordinary team effort and Sam is a great player-coach,” Zelnick said.
Later in the call, Zelnick spoke more about his working relationship with Sam Houser and how Rockstar’s culture has been improving of late. This follows reports of extended crunch at the company in the lead-up to the release of Red Dead Redemption 2.
“I don’t typically speak for other people but I confidently can speak and say that Sam is highly committed to the organization. Sam and I work very closely together; it’s an enormous pleasure to be able to be in business with Sam and the entire team at Rockstar,” he said. “Culturally, I’ve only seen ongoing improvement at Rockstar, frankly. I’ve only seen growth and engagement and innovation.”
“Rockstar Games sets a standard for always trying to improve its operations and how it works and the culture,” he added. “I frankly couldn’t be more proud of how that label is operating.”
Zelnick went on to say that he does not anticipate more staff departures following Dan Houser’s exit. People stay at Rockstar–and Take-Two’s other labels–because they are taken care of and rewarded for their work, he said. Take-Two pays its employees bonuses as part of what it labels “internal royalties.” For the three-month period ended December 31, Take-Two paid out $166.4 million in such bonuses.
“Things couldn’t be better [at Rockstar],” Zelnick said. “And to be very specific, no, we certainly don’t expect other departures. As an organization as a whole, we have an extraordinarily low rate of attrition, vastly lower than the industry average. I think that’s because we offer a great place to work at all of our labels and at Take-Two corporate as well. To the extent that we fall short, we always aim to do better.”
The share price of Take-Two dropped after the company announced Dan Houser’s departure, so it’s expected that Zelnick would try to assuage fears that the company may be rudderless without their former head writer and creative executive.
For more on Take-Two’s earnings report today, check out the stories below:
Fallout: New Vegas developer Obsidian’s new RPG, The Outer Worlds, has sold more than 2 million copies, parent publisher Take-Two announced during an earnings call this week.
The Outer Worlds also launched as a free game for Xbox Game Pass subscribers, but the 2 million sales figures is presumably referring to full-game sales.
On the subject of subscription services like Xbox Game Pass, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said it’s an ongoing conversation at the company regarding how much the company will support programs like Xbox Game Pass and others. He said that, as a general rule, Take-Two simply wants to release games where the consumer is, and that could include subscription libraries.
At the same time, Zelnick said subscription services might be better suited for older titles as a way to give them a second lease on life. “We think subscription offerings are probably better suited to catalog but we’re willing to take experimental chances when it makes sense. It’s early days for all these platforms,” he said.
The Outer Worlds is a unique game from a development and publishing perspective. The title was announced in 2017 as one of the first titles to be published by Take-Two’s indie label, Private Division. In November 2018, Microsoft acquired Obsidian, but due to the previous arrangement, Private Division remained attached as publisher of The Outer Worlds.
Going forward, however, Microsoft will seemingly publish the Outer Worlds franchise if there are indeed any sequels or franchise extensions. Microsoft’s Matt Booty said he sees The Outer Worlds as an “enduring franchise” for Microsoft, so you can expect more instalments.
Warning: Spoilers for the Briarpatch premiere follow…
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Sometimes too stylized for its own good, as if Wes Anderson adapted a John Ridley novel, Briarpatch is a slice of naughty noir that might satiate your mystery cravings this winter (though it’s set in scorching temperatures) if shows like The Sinner or The Outsider are too grim and gruesome for your tastes.
Adapted from a 1984 Ross Thomas novel by podcaster/critic Andy Greenwald, and executive produced by Mr. Robot’s Sam Esmail, Briarpatch is awesomely anchored by Rosario Dawson, who plays a D.C. investigator called back to her quirky, quicksand hometown of San Bonifacio, Texas (nicknamed “Saint Disgrace”) after the sudden, and explosive, murder of her sister.
As Allegra “Pick” Dill, Dawson makes for a cool and confident audience surrogate as she’s called back home for the first time in nine years to find out who put a bomb in her cop sister Felicity’s car. The labeling of “anthology series” means that Briarpatch all but promises to wrap things up by the tenth and final episode, but it’s less clear about what the show will be heading into succeeding seasons. Does it keep Dawson’s Dill around for another mystery or is the small town odd-itorium vibe the true star of the series?
All the hallmarks of a fun and fundamental murder mystery on on hand – from a past tragedy very few people talk about to an estranged sibling who kept a ton of secrets to an assortment of colorful-yet-shifty characters at our disposal. There’s Edi Gathegi’s chatty lawyer A.D. Singe, Jay R. Ferguson’s “big man in the mansion” Jake Spivey, and Brian Geraghty as Felicity’s married love interest, to name a few silly members of the citizenry.
Ostensible allies might be enemies, and vice versa. There are even two seemingly separate cases going on here, what with Allegra also being tapped by a senator to investigate a bunch of missing war money. If things click the way they usually do in this BBQ-slathered noir, both threads will connect somehow.
The marquee star of the show however, aside from Dawson, is the ambiance. Briarpatch notably touts Sam Esmail’s involvement because Briarpatch, like Mr. Robot, presents us with off-kilter visuals and audibles. Often times feeling like a graphic novel come to life, it does run the risk of drowning in its own delirium. As this premiere episode moves forward, the tone smoothes out some, but right out of the gate you’re hit with a lot.
Nothing feels quite real and because of that you’re less invested overall. As Allegra enters her town, it’s ferociously hot, random animals are on the loose, and her hotel is somehow incapable of clearing up a room service tray left out in the hall (to get symbolically blanketed in ants over days). It’s like she walked onto the set of a Coen Bros. film and not a grounded, true place.
Fortunately, Dawson’s Dill isn’t phased easily and her tendency to cut through small talk and pleasantries helps us navigate the dreamscape. Her non-reactivity is what makes the craziness around her work because if it’s somehow all normal to her it can be more readily accepted by us.
“Honestly, it’s been a bit of a hard week,” J. Allen Brack said during an Activision Blizzard earnings call. “Our community has come to expect really amazing things from us, and we’ve heard from them that we have not achieved that bar.”
Brack went on to say that Blizzard plans to support Reforged in the future with updates, while it also aims to communicate with fans about the next steps for improving the game.
“We stand behind our games and have consistently shown that we not only support them but we continue to build on them, even after launch. We’re committed to doing that here as well,” Brack said.
The executive is repeating what Blizzard’s own Randy “Kaivax” Jordan said earlier this week. Jordan took to the company’s forums to discuss Blizzard’s plans for Reforged, specifying that the team is “fully committed to supporting the game [and the Warcraft 3 community] for a long time to come.” This includes preparing a patch scheduled to go live later this week that will address mismatched color and shading modules, portrait animations and audio bugs, UI fixes, and more.
Many fans have noted that certain cutscenes failed to live up to what Blizzard had previously shown during BlizzCon 2018. Jordan said the lack of re-animated cutscenes was, essentially, to keep the original spirit of Warcraft 3 intact.
“[W]e did not want the in-game cutscenes to steer too far from the original game,” Jordan said. “We went a little deeper into the thought process behind that at the show, but the main takeaway is that the campaigns tell one of the classic stories in Warcraft history, and we want to preserve the true spirit of Warcraft 3 and allow players to relive these unforgettable moments as they were (albeit rebuilt with new animations and the higher fidelity art).”
“[W]e want to say we’re sorry to those of you who didn’t have the experience you wanted, and we’d like to share our plans for what’s coming next.”
In Episode 3 of Picard, we learn about why Jean-Luc (Patrick Stewart) and Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd), his former first officer, had a falling out. We also learn more about the details surrounding Picard’s resignation from Starfleet. On the Borg ship called The Artifact, Hugh (Jonathan Del Arco) is back! He was the injured Borg drone being nursed back to health by Geordi La Forge and the rest of the Enterprise in The Next Generation episode “I, Borg”. Meanwhile, Raffi connects Picard with a ship pilot, Cris Rios (Santiago Cabrera), and Soji interviews a Romulan former Borg drone.
Don’t expect to play Beyond Good & Evil 2 anytime soon. Ubisoft confirmed during an earnings call today that the game–which was first announced in 2008–will not be among the five AAA titles that Ubisoft plans to release in the coming financial year that begins in April 2020.
Given that Beyond Good & Evil 2 will not release during the fiscal year that ends March 31, 2021, you can expect the game to launch in April 2021 at the very soonest, according to GI.biz.
Ubisoft has five AAA games that it will release by March 2021. Three of them are scheduled to release between September and December 2020, with the remaining two set to launch between January and March 2021.
Beyond Good & Evil 2 is a prequel to the 2003 original. It’s been in the works for a long time, but there is still no official release date or announced platforms. In an intriguing bit of news, actor Joseph Gordon Levitt’s creative company, HitRecord, is partnering with Ubisoft to give players tools to create content.
In other news, Ubisoft recently spoke about how its games needed to be better differentiated, and set about several top-level changes including reshuffling the management team. Those moves included rehiring Maxime Beland, a veteran producer responsible for several of its biggest hits, to make big-picture decisions about its full slate of games.
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Harley has made it abundantly obvious that she and the Joker are done in every trailer for Birds of Prey. The two members of Gotham’s most infamous clown royal family of crime have officially called it quits. But, considering just how strange the DCEU’s continuity and shared universe actually are (at least, compared to the MCU), we can’t fault anyone for wondering if Mr. J is going to show up in some capacity for Harley’s new movie. And, perhaps even more importantly, which version of Joker would be around, given the fact that Joaquin Phoenix is the most recent person to take on the role?
Thankfully, Birds of Prey has a relatively simple solution for such a weird, tangled web of interconnected stories. Is The Joker in Birds of Prey? Yes–but probably not in the way you’d expect.
In truth, Joker’s cameo in the movie comes care of some re-used Suicide Squad footage. The scene in which Harley is thrown into the vat at Ace Chemicals has been recut for this movie, meaning that we do get to see part of the back of Joker’s head–Jared Leto Joker, that is–just before Harley makes her swan dive. We never actually see his face or any other part of him for that matter–so, as far as cameos are concerned, it’s really not much. Still, it does confirm some things that may or may not have been gnawing at the back of your brain.
For one, Joaquin Phoenix is definitely not the Joker in the “main” DCEU. Not that anyone involved with that movie ever tried to insist that he was–but still, given how jumbled the landscape is with Batman movies in particular, it wasn’t necessarily outside the realm of possibility. But now it’s looking more like Joker, the movie, is entirely separate from movies like Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Birds of Prey, and Shazam and nothing that happened in it will have any bearing on the DCEU moving forward.
Second, Jared Leto’s Joker is still, functionally, canon for the larger DCEU, even if the actor won’t be reprising the role any time soon (at least, that we know of). James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad reboot has already released a cast list, and, despite it being huge, Leto was not included. Similarly, Matt Reeves’ Batman film has confirmed a cast that does not involve Joker at all. We still don’t know where Reeves’ film will fall in the DCEU at large, or if it’ll take a similar approach to Joker and remain completely isolated, but those are the two movies in which we’d likely see a Joker appearance if one was in the works.
So, if you’re trying to keep track of who’s who in the DCEU, your best bet when trying to understand what’s going on with Mr. J is to just keep picturing the face-tattoos and diamond grills of Leto’s Joker for, well, the foreseeable future. Trust us, we’re not stoked on it either, but them’s the breaks.
Birds of Prey is in theaters now.
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Continuity and the logistics of the shared universe in DC’s movies can be a tricky thing to figure out, especially now after movies like Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and Shazam have done their best to pivot away from the old and start something new–or, well, sort of new. DC certainly isn’t building their films out based on the MCU’s blueprint, but they’re also not completely scrapping their early attempts in favor of complete reboots, either.
Birds of Prey exists in that not-a-reboot middle ground. It is a sequel to Suicide Squad, in that one takes place after the other and they both feature the same version of Harley Quinn. But Birds of Prey is a Suicide Squad sequel the same way Aquaman is a direct sequel to Justice League–meaning it only really needs you to remember the tiniest handful of details from Suicide Squad to understand the plot. Can’t remember who Suicide Squad’s bad guy was? No problem. Don’t exactly recall why or how Harley even wound up on that team? Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.
Harley kicks this movie off by announcing that she and the Joker have broken up while providing some rapid-fire exposition regarding her personal origin story. Most of this is done with brand new animated scenes covering her time as a child, going to college, working at Arkham, and so on. However, when it comes time to actually explain her relationship with the Joker, Birds of Prey actually pulls footage directly from Suicide Squad to cover it. The scene where she takes a swan dive into a vat at Ace Chemicals is reused, but cut slightly differently to keep Jared Leto’s Joker mostly out of frame. In fact, the back of his head is all we see of Mr. J for Birds of Prey’s entirety.
The actual details of what Harley and Joker have been doing between then and now are left completely up to the imagination. Tiny details like Joker’s reasons for ending their relationship, how Harley managed to get out from under Amanda Waller’s thumb and stay out of prison, and where Joker is now are never actually explained. As far as Birds of Prey is concerned, Harley has been galavanting around Gotham causing chaos with Joker until very recently and now they aren’t anymore. We can assume that Joker is still in the picture somewhere–other characters certainly seem to be afraid of him as if he’s still at large–but he otherwise never factors into the story.
Birds of Prey’s only other Suicide Squad connection comes in the form of an Easter Egg during Harley’s big police station blow out. As she leaves, she spots a wanted poster for none other than Captain Boomerang (played by Jai Courtney in Suicide Squad) and pauses long enough to say “hey, I know that guy.” This doesn’t tell us much about what Boomerang has been up to since his Suicide Squad days, obviously, just that he’s still at large–but we can assume we’ll get more info when Courtney reprises his role in the upcoming James Gunn Suicide Squad. Maybe he and Harley will get to have a nice catch-up chat before they’re both thrust into whatever mortal peril they’ll be facing this time around.
Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn is in theaters now. The Suicide Squad will hit theaters on August 6, 2021.
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