TwinIon

Wow. I didn't think that teams made any money, but I'd have thought that Riot at least made money from their esports. It's been going for so long now, do they just see it as an advertising thing? Something to keep the game going? This is an obvious problem with esports that will take a long time to change. Games are beginning to have a more broad appeal, but I'd have to expect that even as games have wider audiences, the competitive scene is going to lag behind any progress. I remember seeing that on twitch, but I had no idea how shadey those numbers were. When I'd see people say things like "LOL got more viewers than the superbowl," I always assumed that was BS, but I wasn't aware of how much the meager numbers on a twitch stream are gamed. All the comparisons to standard sports feel pretty misguided. I haven't seen a game that people would watch, but not play. Certainly DOTA and League are basically incomprehensible. Overwatch is a nightmare of fast paced action that I can't really watch. Other FPS games like CS are slightly better, but I still can't imagine them finding an audience beyond their player base. The same holds true for Hearthstone (the only esport I actually follow) or Magic. Rocket League is perhaps the closest I've seen to something non-players could watch, but I don't think it's ever been particularly successful in that way. I think it's conceivable that a future video game will become the next NBA/NFL/MLB, but I don't think that game exists yet. In the meantime, there's the question of what esports are even for. I think most of them exist simply as promotional tools for the games, and that's fine, but it does get pretty silly when you see the money getting poured into the scene. Where investment is justified is in sponsored streams. Forbes had a piece on how much sponsored streamers get paid, which fits along with this video I saw a while back. Esports don't seem worth the investment, but I can easily see how paying Ninja $1M to play a game for 20 hours will be a better investment than putting that money into traditional advertising.

It's kinda a tech demo, but they were supposedly running the real Spider-Man game. I agree with you that it's not representative.

Good article, terrific photos. What exactly does Abrams being Abrams look like? I've very much enjoyed his work, but I've (perhaps unfairly) always felt like he was doing directorial impressions. Sometimes, they're great (TFA), other times, less so (Into Darkness).

They suddenly don't seem concerned about where the money will come from.

This franchise should never have continued after T2. That said, Mackenzie Davis is great, having Linda Hamilton back is awesome, and Tim Miller directing gives me some hope. Still, this is one of those franchises that I feel like a really talented cast and crew still can't save. Tell me those folks are making a new action movie and I'm hyped to hell and back. Make it a Terminator film and I'm less than convinced.

Ok, so the assumption is that they're talking about things we haven't seen on screen, but are the direct results of things we did. That makes sense, giving them more freedom to set things up the way they want to.

Sony was showing off loading times recently, demonstrating what Wired had talked about: Turns out that SSDs are indeed much faster. Of course, they're loading a PS4 game here, so you'd have to imagine that a PS5 game would have more significant assets and take longer, but still.

Barry is really excellent. It's a wonderful mix of dark comedy and drama in a half hour show. There's an episode in season 2 that I think might be the best episode of anything this year. Everyone should check it out.

I think the inevitable evolution of the Quest is to replace the Rift by wirelessly connecting to a PC. Of course that's not possible with this first version, but imagine a Quest 2 (or 3 or 4) that can also act as a wireless PC based HMD. They could easily sell the PC connector for an extra $100-$200 and it would be an instant buy for me. I agree that $400 is not low enough to fly off the shelves, but I think at $200 it sells millions and even at $300 it could challenge the PSVR if the library grows. The PSVR has sold 4M units at $300 + a playstation. The $200 Go has sold a million or two units, and it's not even close to the same experience.

Are the things they're referencing ("the greatest rescue armada in history", "the unimaginable") from Star Trek: Nemesis or something else? I don't recall the end of that film very well, just that Data sacrifices himself for Picard.

Playdate is a new tiny handheld system from Mac software studio Panic, who has more recently moved into gaming with Firewatch and soon, Untitled Goose Game. It looks retro, but it's not a retro game system. It runs an OS designed by Panic and will only play games built for the platform. The Verge It sports a black and white screen, a d-pad, two face buttons, and oddly enough, a hand crank. While the screen feels like a throwback, the Playdate does have modern connectivity options, sporting Wi-Fi, bluetooth, and USB-C. When you buy the device for $149 you'll gain access to one "season" of 12 games. After powering it on, you'll start with one game and receive one new game for each of the next twelve weeks. Future seasons of games will be released depending on how sales go for the first. The games themselves are largely being kept under wraps, but developers of games like Qwop and Katamari Damacy have signed on. It's certainly an oddity, and I kinda want one. It feels like a throwback to those old nearly disposable mobile games from my childhood. At $50 I'd be all over it, at $100 I'd probably buy. At $150, if feels like a stretch. They do warn that stock will be very limited, so buyers will likely have to decide sight unseen.

The Vergecast had the lawyer suing Apple on and they were talking about the implications of this ruling for other platforms, specifically using the Xbox as an example.It seemed like the lawyer said that because you could buy physical Xbox games from different stores, that wouldn't fall under the same category as this ruling. When the hosts brought up the all digital Xbox, the conversation shifted, but it occured to me that you can still buy digital codes for games from other stores. It seems to me that alone satisfies the issue at hand. Even though only a single distribution channel remains, what this case is effectively litigating is the retail channel. As long as the potential for different stores to set prices exists, they would no longer have a monopoly on the sale of apps. Such a system should also satisfy Apple's requirements of security, as all apps would still go through their store. It would be interesting if they win this case and it effectively means that you either have to allow multiple stores on your platform (a-la Android), or you have to allow codes to be sold by third parties. From what I gather, this ruling certainly applies to the Xbox and Playstation (in that it would allow customers to sue), but it's less clear if it could apply to the Epic Store. This ruling also doesn't really address the fees that Apple charges developers. Separate lawsuits will determine that, even if they might be after kinda the same thing.

Reviews are coming out. With the first 73 reviews, it's currently at a 60% on RT. Most seem to like the actor who plays Aladdin well enough. After that impressions get pretty mixed.

Good games sell. How this is such a mystery to the companies that push out titles to hit arbitrary dates confuses me.

I agree. The base stations are annoying to setup, and took a good deal of trial and error to get right, but their existence isn't the thing that prevents me from using my Rift more often. Most of the time it's that my office is perfectly clear, and the tether to the PC is always annoying. There's also the matter of orientation. Both because of the wire and because of my 3 tracker setup, everything works best when facing in one direction, so if I'm playing something omnidirectional, it's annoying to have to reorient myself periodically.

Frostbite continues to impress. It's a shame it's so difficult to make good games with it. EA should take a lesson from Amazon and see if your product is good enough to compete on the market. Licence Frostbite out and see how the market responds. If no one wants to use it because there's no support or because it lacks features, then maybe those are reasons that your internal teams don't want to use it either. They can use that feedback to make the decision to make it competitive or not, but if you're pouring resources into something like this, they should justify that investment vs what's available.

I don't know if I agree with that. What we've seen is various people able to use magic with lots of different attributions. Berric and Melisandre use magic that they credit to the Lord of Light. The faceless men use magic they credit to the many faced god. Bran uses magic that is pretty attributable to the old gods (in so far as the weirwood trees represent a connection to the old gods), and I think the same could be said for the Children of the Forest and therefore the Night King and his army. The old lady that cursed Dany used magic she credited to the great shepherd. Qyburn and Dany both use magic, though neither is really attributed as far as I can remember. So we've seen a lot of people unequivocally use magic, and they've all credited various sources. The lord of light stuff is maybe more obvious because its usage happens when people are directly praying to it, but I don't think that makes it any more real than the great shepherd. Personally, I'm fine with that ambiguity. This is a world where magic exists, and various beliefs have popped up justifying that magic. Letting the "true source" of that magic seem relatively unknowable makes sense.

So, no real changes then. Although, politically, I think that the Dems actually come out on top here. They're willing to work on a plan, and he's not. I don't think it matters at all, but I think Trump comes off as the one not willing to play ball.

I've been enjoying the single player content. There's a lot of variety and I haven't been too consistently blown out by unbeatable draws by my opponents, even in heroic. I'm excited they've kept up their increased pace of nerfs. I've very interested in their new willingness to add in a single new card and buff old ones. It's a whole new paradigm for Hearthstone and the kind of thing that, if done regularly, could keep the meta fresh between expansions. Even if right now, it seems that there could be an issue with the new card:

As an owner of a Rift, I know I shouldn't buy the Quest, but I'm still tempted. I don't think there will be any game that the Quest will have that won't work better on the Rift, but the idea of playing without wires in different rooms, and being able to take it elsewhere, is really making me consider it.

Why? If a republican won the popular vote, they'd almost certainly have won the electoral college. Reverting back wouldn't help the democrats.

None of these should be made.

I haven't spent much time with a racing game in a long while, but now that I've been following Formula 1 I might actually give this one a shot.

I think for me, the reason that 1 is my favorite is that it has that small hint of emotional stakes. However silly or overblown it might have been, you understand John Wick's drive in that film. Chapter 2 felt less purposeful for that reason. He's reluctantly forced into doing a job, and then has to deal with a doublecross, but it just feels like he's lacking conviction in his task. With Parabellum, it's pure survival, so again, it's easier to feel his motivation. I was also surprised how much I actually cared about the other characters in 3. Of course, when talking about the emotional stakes of John Wick, we're measuring trace amounts in every film. But I still think that's why the first was so successful. Like in the Raid, you just need to feel his motivation just barely enough, and it's sufficient to allow you to enjoy all the insane (and really well filmed) action.

Trailer 2 is out. It's not too spoilery, but I doubt many of us need convincing to see this one.