Phil Spencer: Xbox Focus Is on Software and Services, Not Console Sales
Head of Xbox Phil Spencer believes the future – and present – of measuring success in the video game business is by focusing on software and services, not hardware. In an interview with Kotaku at E3 2019, Spencer alluded to Google Stadia in asserting his belief that "the consoles are not where the profit in this side of the business is made."
"The business is selling software and services," he said. "The business is not how many consoles you sell. The consoles are not where the profit in this side of the business is made, which is where the whole: ‘Who’s selling more consoles’ at any one time as the kind of root good of who is doing well in the business is just not true. You have other companies entering gaming who don’t even have a console as part of their equation. It’s all about how many games are people playing. And how much people are spending playing those games and how often they play."
Why Has Flashpoint’s Batman Been Working With Bane?
The latest issue of Batman finally addresses one of the series' biggest lingering mysteries.
Warning: this article contains spoilers for Batman #73!
Batman #72 tied much of the series together, with the Thomas Wayne of the Flashpoint universe deducing Bane's master plan to finally break Batman. Thomas figured out how everything - from the emergence of Gotham and Gotham Girl to Booster Gold's disastrous birthday present to Catwoman abandoning her fiance - has been part of that complex plan. What that issue didn't reveal is why Thomas would align himself with Bane against his own son.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Preview: A Beautiful New Direction
Initially I imagined LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was a compilation of sorts, featuring updated versions of previous LEGO Star Wars games while filling in the gaps of unrepresented films with new content. This simply is not the case. All nine main Star Wars movies are equally represented with brand new levels and objectives along with the freedom to play in the order you choose. As the E3 demo showed, a cool rotating episode select menu allows anyone to play whichever episode they want from the start. If I don't want to play Attack of the Clones, great. The option is mine!
BotW 2 Exists Because the Team Had ‘Too Many Ideas’ for DLC
The team behind The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild opted to create a sequel rather than an entirely new Zelda game due to the amount of DLC ideas it had for the 2017 original.
Speaking with Kotaku, series producer Eiji Aonuma said DLC was a great way to "add more elements to the same world" as Breath of the Wild, "but when it comes down to technical things, DLC is pretty much data — you’re adding data to a preexisting title. And so when we wanted to add bigger changes, DLC is not enough, and that’s why we thought maybe a sequel would be a good fit."
When asked if the sequel was initially planned as an expansion, Aonuma said the team was only brainstorming DLC ideas at first, until it became clear they had greater ambitions. "This is too many ideas, let’s just make one new game and start from scratch," he said.
Disney Pixar Announces New Animated Movie Soul
Disney and Pixar have announced a new animated film, Soul, to be released in exactly one year.
Announced on Twitter, the film is described as “a journey from the streets of New York City to the cosmic realms to discover the answers to life’s most important questions.” Soul is set to arrive in theaters on June 19, 2020.
One year from today, @Pixar Animation Studios will take you on a journey from the streets of New York City to the cosmic realms to discover the answers to life’s most important questions. Disney & Pixar’s “Soul” arrives in theaters on June 19, 2020 pic.twitter.com/xkaFGcKhzI
Amazon’s Wheel of Time Series Casts Its Moiraine
Amazon has officially cast the first actor in its upcoming Wheel of Time TV series adaptation. IGN can confirm that Rosamund Pike has landed the role of Moiraine Damodred, the character who is being positioned as the lead in this telling of Robert Jordan's iconic fantasy series. Pike will also serve as a producer on the show.
Additionally, Amazon revealed that Brandon Sanderson, who wrote the final three novels in the Wheel of Time book series after Jordan's death in 2007, will serve as consulting producer on the series alongside Jordan's widow, Harriet McDougal.
Pike is a notable casting choice for the Amazon series, known best for her roles in Gone Girl, Jack Reacher, and Die Another Day. Her character, Moiraine Damodred, is one of the most respected magic users in the world of Wheel of Time, and plays a pivotal role in the story's central throughline to find the Dragon Reborn, a character who is fated to defeat the evil force known as the Dark One. See Pike side-by-side with artist Dan dos Santos's depiction of Moiraine from the Fires of Heaven e-book cover below:
The King’s Man: Info Released for Matthew Vaughn Kingsman Prequel
The next film in the Kingsman series, a prequel called The King’s Man, is set to hit theaters in February 2020.
Directed by Matthew Vaughn, the film’s premise is as follows: "As a collection of history's worst tyrants and criminal masterminds gather to plot a war to wipe out millions, one man must race against time to stop them. Discover the origins of the very first independent intelligence agency in The King’s Man, directed by Matthew Vaughn, coming to theaters February 2020."
The official title card for the film can be seen below.
Credit: 20th Century Fox, Disney
Nintendo Stole E3 2019, According to Twitter
According to Twitter’s own metrics, Nintendo, Keanu Reeves and Final Fantasy VII Remake ranked among the most talked about subjects of E3 2019.
Revealed to The Hollywood Reporter, Twitter claims the biggest moment of the event for their platform was the E3 2019 Nintendo Direct presentation broadcasted Tuesday morning. Nintendo’s big show was followed in popularity by Keanu Reeves' surprise appearance at Microsoft’s press conference on Sunday. The third most tweeted about moment was Square Enix’s conference on Monday, where it debuted new gameplay from Final Fantasy VII Remake and unveiled Marvel’s Avengers.
New to Netflix for July
Netflix is about to hit us with a July heatwave as Stranger Things 3 lands smack dab on Independence Day and the final season of acclaimed dramedy Orange is the New Black arrives on the 26th.
In between, you can catch movies like Philadelphia, Rain Man, Disney's Mary Poppins Returns, Cloverfield, Caddyshack, and Megamind while binging new seasons of originals like Queer Eye and Workin' Moms.
There's also a documentary paying tribute to the tacos along with original films and shows starring the likes of (a bearded!) Chris Evans, Michael K. Williams, Katee Sackhoff, Anthony Mackie, and Benda Song. Take a gander...
Before we unveil the full list of what's coming however, here's everything LEAVING Netflix in July.
Gears 5’s New Map Builder Lets You Make Brutal Maps…on One Condition
The Coalition revealed a new mode for Gears 5 at E3 2019 called Escape. In it, a team of up to three must outrun a cloud of venom while slaying the Swarm that patrols ahead with their limited resources. The thing is, Escape isn’t limited to just one map. The Coalition will be uploading a new Escape hive roughly every week. This mode’s maps are built with a tile system, which will be available to all players through the new 2D Map Builder feature. We sat down with The Coalition to make our first map and explore the lengths at which we could customize a hive for Escape.
My goal was to make something terribly hard but not completely impossible. You have to complete one run on your custom map in order to publish it, which is fair. I began by placing a starting point and picked a few corridors and rooms of varying sizes to lay the framework. For the sake of time, I chose to stick with only one chapter, though The Coalition said you can build your hive to have many chapters, which are sections of the hive that are broken up by Safe Rooms. These Left 4 Dead-style Safe Rooms allow players to get a little bit of a break from the chaos; pause, get a snack, or do whatever you need. Each chapter also has a limit to how many pieces you can add based on a point value assigned to each piece. Once you meet that budget, you need to move onto the next chapter. I didn’t feel like the budget was limiting.