Month: September 2020

As the CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software, which publishes some of the biggest games out there (literally), Strauss Zelnick doesn’t see cloud gaming making a huge difference to his business. Zelnick explained his lack of enthusiasm in an in-depth interview with Protocol.

Though he isn’t claiming cloud gaming is a bad thing, the gaming exec is reluctant to believe the cloud is going to make a big dent in industry income. “Any new distribution vehicle that offers high-quality, efficiency and a reasonable price is good for our business,” he prefaces. “That said, there was all this hype for years about VR, and I wasn’t very compelled by that. Thankfully, as a result, we didn’t waste any money on it. Equally, there was an enormous amount of hype around movement to the cloud for interactive entertainment distribution.”

His problem with cloud gaming isn’t around the technology or the execution, but rather the premise that it will open up a whole new market of people who haven’t previously been gamers. “There were some parties who were saying there are 130 [million] to 140 million current-gen consoles out there,” Strauss explained. “There are billions of PCs out there. You know, if you can make in a frictionless way, console video games available to everyone who has a PC or a tablet or a phone, then your market size automatically would be 20x, just mathematically. Of course that doesn’t make any sense at all. Because the implication is you are super interested in video games but you were just unwilling to buy a console.”

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On today’s Save State, Persia talks about the PS5 box contents being reportedly revealed, Bungie and Microsoft acquisition rumors being debunked, and Halo 3: ODST finally coming to PC.

The Mario franchise celebrates its 35th anniversary this year, and Nintendo is celebrating with a number of exciting projects like an All-Stars bundle for Switch. To promote the anniversary, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto spoke to CNN about the legacy of the character. One interesting tidbit that came out of the interview was the advice that Miyamoto would give to Mario if he was a 35-year-old man.

In reality, Nintendo claims Mario is 26, and that’s the age he will always be in the game universe. But if he was 35, Miyamoto says he would tell the portly plumber to live in peace and harmony–and also don’t let your facial hair get out of control.

Miyamoto said he would tell Mario to keep “living in a way that’s true to yourself is more enjoyable than being in competition with others. You’ll be keeping plenty busy, so don’t forget to work out and keep your mustache well groomed.”

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Troubling allegations continue to surface about the alleged abusive and unprofessional behavior of Joss Whedon on the set of Justice League, a controversy first brought to light by Cyborg actor Ray Fisher back in July.

Since then, Fisher’s co-star, Aquaman actor Jason Momoa has taken to social media to proclaim his support for his colleague–first in an Instagram story where Momoa used the hashtag “IStandWithRayFisher” and now in a full Instagram post.

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The state of New York has recruited Ant-Man star Paul Rudd for a new public health campaign to help raise awareness about wearing masks.

The video begins in a silly fashion, as Rudd pretends to be a young person. “Yo, listen hype-beasts, masks protect you and your dank squad. Because caring about other people is the new not caring about other people. We gotta yeet this virus.”

It gets serious at the end, with Rudd breaking from character and staring into the camera as he delivers his message:

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A familiar face from Captain America’s past is making his way to the Disney+ series Falcon and the Winter Soldier, if new photos from the show’s set are to be believed. According to new images from JustJared, filming has resumed on the series, after being halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year. What’s more, one of the stars of Captain America: The Winter Soldier has been seen on set–in costume.

In the photos, you can see actor/former UFC fighter Georges St-Pierre in costume as Georges Batroc, the mercenary Cap and the team did battle with at the beginning of The Winter Soldier. The character, known as Batroc the Leaper in the comics, is a master of savate (French kickboxing) and has yet to appear anywhere else in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It looks like that will be changing soon.

Also seen on set was Emily VamCamp, who appeared in both The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War as Sharon Carter/Agent 13. You might remember her as not only Steve Rogers’ (Chris Evans) love interest, but also the niece of his other love interest–it’s complicated.

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Microsoft recently announced the prices of the Xbox Series S ($300) and Xbox Series X ($500), and they came in lower than some might have imagined, especially the lower-spec S model. The consoles were intentionally priced low, and Microsoft is launching the phone-style subscription plan, to make it easier to get people into the Xbox ecosystem and then start spending money on games, according to Xbox CFO Tim Stuart.

Stuart told Barron’s that the aggressive pricing for the Series S/X consoles will help Microsoft “kick-start” the new generation.

“Our goal was to increase that top-of-funnel as fast as possible, get people into the ecosystem, get people into that next-gen experience, and frankly kind of kick-start this generation as fast as we can,” Stuart said. “If you can get that install base as big as you can up front, you have customers enjoying the next-gen experiences we have to offer. And from a business side, we start to monetize and build a customer lifetime value much faster than a slow build over time.”

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Back in July, it was announced that Universal Studios was calling off its Halloween Horror Nights celebrations at both the Florida and California parks. While Universal Orlando Resort is open at limited capacity, Universal Studios Hollywood remains closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, though, it seems the Orlando parks do have something in the works for Halloween.

This coming weekend, September 19 and 20, the park is holding an event dubbed “Halloween seasonal experience testing.” Universal Orlando Resort tells GameSpot that currently, these are the only two days scheduled for the event. Given that the word “testing” is in the name, though, it would not be a surprise if this is expanded in the weeks to come.

Included in the weekend event is access to two new haunted mazes–Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein Lives and Revenge of the Tooth Fairy, both of which are not recommended for guests under age 13. You can check out descriptions of the mazes, from Universal’s website, below.

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In 2018 Microsoft had the idea to sink an entire data center to the bottom of the Scottish sea as an experiment to see if submerged conditions were better for data centers. After two years, Microsoft resurfaced its nautical data center and discovered the results turned out great.

Microsoft sunk 864 servers, which contained 27.6 petabytes of storage, down 117 feet into the ocean. Microsoft’s Project Natick team believed these underwater conditions would actually be more energy-efficient and better overall for data centers. And it looks like they were correct.

As it turns out, underwater data centers had just one-eight the failure rate of on-land data centers. The reason is that on land factors like oxygen, moisture in the air can corrode computer components. Not to mention the many temperature fluctuations over time.

Meanwhile, if data centers are placed in Microsoft’s submerged pods, engineers can create a stable environment where they control factors like humidity and oxygen, or just keep data centers away from people who might break things themselves.

Having deployable data centers like this can also allow companies to build servers near coastal areas that need them.

The next stage of the experiment will see if Microsoft can safely recycle retrieved data centers once they reach the end of their lifespan. Check out Project Natick’s full research blog here, and the video explainer here.

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Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN.

Photo by Microsoft