TwinIon

But they've already explained the origins of all of Han's iconic things. What possible purpose would a sequel even serve?

I didn’t even watch the trailer, but found the first episode both surprising and funny. Apparently animation is where all the fun ideas that the MCU can’t support end up.

What else could the Republicans possibly say to further drive home their disinterest in passing this bill? Sure, McConnell hasn't outright said he wouldn't work with Biden under any circumstances, all he's said is he wouldn't possibly agree to anything like the number Trump was throwing around and that he wouldn't support any effort to pay for it or any effort pass it without paying for it. He's not exactly being coy about his intentions here.

Is Warner so certain of their inability to survive on their own?

I would be concerned if crypto had shown any utility at all.

Looks like they're done arguing, seems like we shouldn't expect a ruling for a couple months? Seems pretty bad for Epic that there's basically no precedent for the government doing what they're asking for. Still seems like anti-steering is by far their best hope, with a very very outside chance at changing IAP rules. Allowing App Stores within App Stores seems unlikely, and allowing side-loaded apps feels next to impossible.

It's an open world action RPG with a ton of combat options with a repetitive structure. That can still be a worthwhile game, but the inflexibility in how you approach objectives really puts me off. A game like this feels like it lives and dies with how creative you can be in encounters. It sounds like the combat achieves that in spades, with a wide variety of weapons and abilities that can be combined in any number of ways. Only the very best games seem to allow much flexibility in solving puzzles (Portal, BOTW), so I wouldn't hold that against it. But when you structure a game around capturing outposts, why limit how you can do it? The mere mention of invisible walls in a game explicitly designed to mimic BOTW angers me. Also, the more I see of this game, the less I like the art style. It's outrageous and crazy and I want to embrace a small studio taking such a large swing, but I can't help but find it grating and ugly.

Also still have no clue what this movie is about, but I think the look is slightly different from the rest of the MCU, and I have very high hopes for anything Zhao directs.

I just watch in release order, though I think it'll be a while before I go through them all again.

Touche.

After FF7R I'm much more interested in a FF game than I had been in a long time. Of course, at this point having "Final Fantasy" in the title tells you so little about the game as to be meaningless, so I guess we'll just have to see what type of game this is, regardless of title.

I agree. I'd much rather they take their time and build a truly next gen Bethesda game. At this point they, of all people, should understand the potential for recurring revenue if they can make a great game. They can look forward to republishing Starfield on every possible platform for the next decade if they get it right.

I've been reading reporters' twitter threads as they've been sitting in the trial, and my own take away is that it's difficult for Apple to entirely defend their in-app purchases rules to this judge. That's a pretty wild assertion, founded on the idea that they're owed a commission for anything happening inside an app. But they're not really able to back it up. It seems like they have a fine argument for why they think their solution is good for the customer, but a poor answer for why they deserve a cut of every transaction that happens on the phone. Or later when the judge mentions banking apps, pointing out that Apple doesn't charge a fee when transacting with their bank. The more you break it down, the more arbitrary it seems that Apple claims an absolute right to money that changes hands on their platform, but only for very specific types of things. I don't know if that is enough for Epic to win, but I'm starting to think the judge will find a way to at least loosen some restrictions.

PSVR 2 Halo Infinite Horizon Forbidden West Any AAA single player games to be excited about, though bonus points for putting the PS5 to work.

I didn't really play Fallout 76, so I don't know what improvements were already present in that game, but pretty much all of this feels like table stakes. Having a big team to work on a custom engine is good, and I'm happy to hear reports they're working harder on it, so yeah. Material based rendering, photogrammetry support, and better shadows are all good good, but again, expected. Global illumination is good, but not designing for ray tracing seems like a bummer, but probably best they don't bite off more than they can chew. Most of this felt like it was just catching up to other modern engines. Reworking animation and pathfinding is a godsend if they get it right. Hopefully they put a lot of work into this, because they're two areas that make Bethesda games feel so jankey. I won't expect them to be up to Last of Us or Assassins Creed standards, but please be at least decent. After Cyberpunk, maybe I need to be more appreciative of their NPC AI. However, if anything this makes me a bit worried. I hadn't considered that Stanfield might require 3D movement in zero G, In animation they're pretty far behind the curve on a nice flat plane, expecting them to make a big leap in overall quality and make it work in 3D might be too much. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited for Starfield, and have been wowed by Bethesda's tech in the past, but at this point it's a rather distant past. Morrowind and Oblivion were marvels, but in the 15 years since, they haven't really impressed. I'd love for that to change with Starfield.

I recall Apple being rather clear that they didn't want to buy a catalog of old stuff for Apple TV, but it seems they may have changed their mind about a year ago, so they were likely in the bidding.

Current 3060s already have the LHR. Are those any easier to find right now compared to a 3070 or 3080? I've only been trying to get a 3080. I certainly don't mind them limiting the mining capabilities, but it's definitely not going to solve the problem by itself.

Amazon always seemed like the most likely buyer to me, and given every streaming services' desire to strengthen their catalogs, I figured it would get bid up quite a bit.

When it comes to straight up dollars and cents, maybe someone that understands M&A better can tell me who "wins" in this situation. So AT&T bought Warner for $85B, and they're only receiving $43B worth of stock from this spin off. However, AT&T shareholders will receive 71% of the new company. (A company that will begin it's life with $55B in debt, fyi). So is it just a straight $42B loss for AT&T? Does AT&T break even if the new company is worth $60B (making 71% worth the $42B), or does the new company have to be worth $120B (making the 71% equal to the original price of $85B)? Or is it just a different story for AT&T the company vs shareholders of AT&T? Or is all this just something we can't figure out given what has been released? (Some of these numbers are from The Verge, some are from The Post.)

They have tough competition. Even just this month another wireless carrier offloaded its' media business, with Verizion selling Yahoo/AOL for half of what they paid 6 years ago.

I find it kind of hilarious that AT&T spent $85 bilion and fought so hard in court to buy Warner Media with the idea that all that content would somehow boost the mobile division, restructured the entire media empire to become a competitor to Netflix, drove out most of the creative people who knew how to run HBO, and now they're spinning if off after less than three years.

I would be very surprised if we go from never having seen so much as a screenshot to the game actually releasing this year. I'm sure MS wants it to, but it just seems dubious to me. Xbox exclusivity on the other hand seems very plausible. It's probably the biggest game under the whole Bethesda umbrella that MS can use to boost their platform, it would be pretty strange if they put it out on the PS5. I'm probably in the minority, but I'm just really hoping that it isn't too much in the Fallout/Elder Scrolls lineage. Outer Worlds was fun, but it felt anachronistic. If Starfield can take the essence of those Bethesda RPGs but package it in a decidedly modern game, I'll be over the moon.

The thing that I don't get about all this is that it seems like such poor political calculus. Sure, I understand that during his presidency anything other than unwavering support for Trump seemed like political suicide. Now? He's the twice impeached one term President who lost you the Presidency and the Senate last election. Certainly there are some folk who are in deep Trump districts that need to show fealty, but certainly the entire party would be better off by distancing themselves.

I'd definitely rather have the black than the white one, but I don't think I'll need another PS5 controller anytime soon.

Maybe technically they're both just streaming video, but in terms of what role they play in the market they're very different. YouTube TV competes with Hulu Live TV, Sling, every other streaming TV service, as well as cable TV and even broadcast TV. Roku could do just fine selling boxes that don't work with YouTube TV because there are all sorts of options that their users could use instead to get the exact same content. In that way Google's negotiating position in regards to YouTube TV is even weaker than others that have had disputes like HBO or NBC, because much of their content can't be had elsewhere. YouTube itself is a whole different thing. It's a whole category near unto itself. Selling a box that does video but doesn't support YouTube would be a serious problem. Netflix is king of paid steaming, but as of July 2019, they estimated YouTube to be 7x their size (in terms of streaming hours). I'm not really on Roku's side here, but the nature of YouTube is what makes an unfair fight and a potential anti-trust issue.