Yet Another Video Game Streaming Service Is Coming

It appears the next big battleground for gaming might be in the streaming world. Yet another major company, Verizon, is reportedly launching a game-streaming service of its own to presumably compete against what could be similar offerings from companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Sony, Electronic Arts, and others.

According to The Verge, Verizon is launching a game-streaming service called …. Verizon Gaming. The platform is reportedly already being alpha-tested with the Nvidia Shield device. In the future, it’ll be rolled out for Android smartphones, according to the report. It’ll support an Xbox One controller paired wirelessly with the Shield or Android device, apparently.

More than 135 games are currently up and running with the current testing phase, including Fortnite, Red Dead Redemption II, God of War, Battlefield V, and and many others. The current testing period is focused on making the experience as smooth as possible, the report said.

There is no word yet on a release date or pricing for Verizon Gaming; as mentioned, it sounds like it’s still very early days for the platform.

Whatever the case, it is becoming clear that game-streaming could be a very big deal in the gaming world, and perhaps sooner rather than later. While OnLive might have been a failure, the fact that companies like Verizon, Microsoft, Sony, Amazon, EA, and others are now investing in game-streaming suggests that it might be time now that streaming has enough resources and momentum behind it to actually catch on in earnest.

The appeal of game-streaming is that you don’t need powerful, expensive hardware to play games at home or on the go. Instead, streamed games run on hardware at data centres and then get streamed to (theoretically) whatever device you might have. Physical games and gaming hardware like Xbox and PlayStation consoles are not likely to vanish anytime soon, as internet availability and speed is not consistent or reliable around the world.

Microsoft is known to be working on multiple new Xbox consoles, while Sony has said it may release a PlayStation 5. Nintendo, for its part, has said it may eventually exit the hardware market, but that may not happen soon, if it ever does.

Streaming is already commonplace and accepted for movies, TV, and music–so it was always seemingly only a matter of time before games caught up.

For more on the new game-streaming platforms coming out, check out the news stories below.

Microsoft

Electronic Arts

Google

Amazon

This Year’s Super Bowl Music Act Is A Safe, Expected Choice

As rumoured, Maroon 5 will perform at the halftime show of Super Bowl LIII, the band confirmed today. It was also announced that Travis Scott and Big Boi will be the supporting acts for the big game taking place in Atlanta, Georgia early next month.

This confirmation comes after reports that Jay-Z, Cardi B, and Rihanna said no to performing at the Super Bowl as a show of solidarity with former NFL player Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick made headlines when he kneeled during the National Anthem in protest of the racial inequality in the United States, and he hasn’t played professionally since 2017.

Scott told Billboard that he only agreed to performing at the Super Bowl if the football league agreed to make a donation to an organisation fighting for social justice. Scott himself donated $500,000 to Dream Corps.

Super Bowl LIII will be broadcast on CBS and and streamed on CBSSports.com on Sunday, February 3. CBS and GameSpot are sister companies.

Some of the biggest names in music and entertainment have performed at Super Bowl halftime shows over the years, including Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Aerosmith, Tom Petty, and Bruce Springsteen just to name a few.

In other news, EA Sports typically releases a “Super Bowl” edition of the latest Madden game at a lower price and with some extras packed in, so keep checking back with GameSpot for more.

Aquaman Crosses $1 Billion At The Box Office, But It’s Not The Biggest DC Movie In The US

Aquaman is doing big business. The superhero movie has now passed $1 billion at the global box office, making it one of the most successful movies in the history of cinema. After yet another weekend atop the box office charts, it’s now made $1.02 billion worldwide.

Only 36 other movies have made $1 billion at the box office, according to Forbes.

Aquaman is now the second-biggest DC Comics movie ever, surpassing The Dark Knight ($1.004 billion). It’s still behind The Dark Knight Rises ($1.08 billion), however. As Entertainment Weekly reminds us, ticket prices have been rising over the years, which may inflate figures.

In the United States and Canada, Aquaman has pulled in $287 million, which is below the domestic box office hauls of Wonder Woman ($412.5 million), Suicide Squad ($325.1 million), and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice ($330.3 million). The film is performing far better internationally; it’s made $300 million in China alone. All told, the movie has pulled in $732 million from overseas markets.

Aquaman the fifth movie released in 2018 to pass $1 billion at the global office; the others were Avengers: Infinity War ($2.045 billion), Black Panther ($1.346 billion), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ($1.309 billion), and Incredibles 2 ($1.242 billion).

Director James Wan responded to the news of Aquaman passing $1 billion, thanking the cast and crew of the film for the incredible achievement. He also said Jason Momoa’s performance as Aquaman will help the character become the “gold standard for this character for generations to come.” You can read all of his tweets below.

You Season 1 Review

This is a (mostly) spoiler-free review of You, which originally aired on Lifetime, but is now available to stream on Netflix.

Here’s the thing you need to know right off the bat: You is divisive. And that’s a feature of its design, not a bug. The story of an obsessive Nice Guy murderer as he tries to will the object of his desire into loving him for the rest of their lives might rub a few folks the wrong way. You might feel the urge to yell, scream, gasp, laugh, and cringe while you’re watching it. You have to make people feel something uncomfortable about the expectations we as a society place upon romance and love in order to make them really think. And that is what You hopes to accomplish in its first season, now available to stream.

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True Detective Star on Playing Multiple Versions of Same Character

The third season of HBO’s True Detective is set to premiere on Sunday, January 13, with an all-new cast featuring Mahershala Ali (Moonlight) and Stephen Dorff (Blade). Dorff and Ali play detectives trying to solve a missing-persons case involving two children in rural Arkansas. Series creator and executive producer Nic Pizzolatto wrote the eight-episode season, alongside Deadwood alum David Milch, who co-wrote episode 4.

Season 3’s narrative spans three decades, following the lives of detectives Wayne Hays (Ali) and Roland West (Dorff). In order to effectively show the passage of time from the 1980s to 2015, both Ali and Dorff had to undergo radical transformations with the help prosthetics. Ali spoke to IGN about his approach to portraying multiple versions of the same character.

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