Month: January 2021

Today marks the 10th anniversary of The Last Story‘s original release in Japan, and game director Hironobu Sakaguchi is commemorating the occasion by sharing a ton of concept art of the acclaimed Wii RPG on Twitter.

The concept art was drawn by artist Kimihiko Fujisaka and ranges from various character sketches to battle system mock ups. You can see a selection of the concept art below, while more can be found on Sakaguchi’s Twitter page:

The Last Story was developed by Mistwalker, the studio Sakaguchi founded after leaving Square Enix back in 2004. Sakaguchi himself is most famous for creating the Final Fantasy series, and his studio similarly specialized in RPGs, releasing notable titles like Blue Dragon and, more recently, the mobile game Terra Battle (which recently ended services after six years on the market).

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The stock market has been going through some interesting ups and downs recently, and it’s all thanks to a group of Reddit users who are targeting certain stocks to push their value to incredible levels. GameStop was targeted first, and now, they’ve set their sights on AMC Theatres.

Stock prices for the movie theater chain cost $5 a share on January 26, but have since tripled in price as of Wednesday morning. This is what’s called an organized short squeeze where a stock jumps up, and it forces traders to buy it after betting the price to fall. This move to buy more only adds to the stock’s price, and the needle could be moving up for AMC very soon.

This is what happened with GameStop’s stock. It closed on January 8 at $17.69, and a few weeks later, it opened on January 27 at $354.83. However, this short squeezing started taking place back on January 22. If this happens again with AMC stock, the graph below is just the start of something big.

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AMD CEO Lisa Su has indicated that supply shortages for gaming consoles, desktop CPUs, and GPUs will continue until the second half of 2021, with the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Series S most affected.

The news was included in AMD’s full-year financial earnings (via Tom’s Hardware), which showed the company surpassing its past earning records with a strong Q4. This was in part thanks to the launch of a slew of AMD-powered products, including both current generation consoles, AMD’s Zen 3-powered Ryzen CPUs, and RX 6000 series graphics cards.

Supply of all three has been tight since launch, however, and Su expects this to continue being the case until new production capacity comes online. Su also pointed out that lower-cost components for low-end PCs and both consoles will be affected the most given the overwhelming demand, with the prospects for new stock of much higher-priced components looking more positive over the same period.

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Netflix is partnering with Legendary Entertainment for new anime shows based on the new Tomb Raider games and the Kong movie Skull Island.

The Tomb Raider anime will follow Lara Croft’s adventures after the events of the Crystal Dynamics reboot trilogy, which wrapped up with 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The Skull Island anime, meanwhile, follows a shipwrecked crew on an island who face off against monsters and Kong himself. This was also the plot for the 2017 film Kong: Skull Island.

According to Deadline, Brian Duffield (The Babysitter) is writing and producing the Skull Island series. The Witcher: Blood Origin’s Tasha Huo is writing the Tomb Raider anime series. You can see Netflix’s announcement tweets for both shows below.

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The first images from the upcoming Netflix fantasy series Shadow and Bone have been revealed. The eight-episode show is an adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s novels and it hits the service on April 23.

The pictures were tweeted by Netflix, and they reveal the show’s main characters. The series is set in the war-torn land of Ravka, a world inspired by 18th century Russia, and it focuses on an orphan soldier named Alina who discovers she wields powerful magical powers. Upcoming British actor Jessie Mei Li plays Alina, and the cast also includes Ben Barnes (Westworld) as the powerful General Aleksander “The Darkling” Morozova and Archie Renaux (Morbius) as tracker Malyen “Mal” Oretsev. Check the images below:

Shadow and Bone also stars Kit Young (Endeavour), Amita Suman (The Outpost), and Freddy Carter (Pennyworth) as members of the criminal Six of Crows gang. Shadow and Bone adapts two separate book series by Bardugo, known collectively as the Grishaverse–the Grisha trilogy and the Six of Crows duology. Shadow and Bone was the first Grishaverse novel and it was published in 2012.

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Netflix has announced Skull Island, a new anime series set in the Legendary MonsterVerse. It will be produced by Powerhouse Animation, the studio behind Castlevania.

A shipwrecked crew, an island of monsters, and one king to rule them all. Skull Island is a new anime series set in @Legendary’s Monsterverse from @PowerhouseAnim.

— NX (@NXOnNetflix) January 27, 2021

As detailed by the tweet, the series will involve a shipwrecked crew landing on an island full of monsters, where one king rules them all. That ‘king’ is likely to be King Kong himself, considering Skull Island is the giant gorilla’s home.

Skull Island has been featured in numerous films, starting in the 1933 movie King Kong. Most recently, it was the setting of Kong: Skull Island, and modern film fans will also recall it being a large part of Peter Jackson’s King Kong. The Kong: Skull Island version of the setting is officially part of the Legendary MonsterVerse, and so may well be the starting point for this show, which is also an official part of the universe.

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No images or artwork has yet been shown, but Powerhouse Animation has produced a variety of well-liked shows, including Netflix’s Castlevania adaptation and Blood of Zeus. The studio is based in Austin, Texas, but has produced animation in a similar style to Japanese anime studios.

For more, check out our look at every monster in the MonsterVerse, why Kong is so big in the upcoming Godzilla vs. Kong movie, and vote in our survey on who you think will win the epic monster battle. 

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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer. 

EA has announced the newest studio in its stable, Full Circle, and the Vancouver-based, but also globally focused, studio will be the team behind the recently announced new Skate game.

While it remains unclear whether the newest entry in the Skate franchise will be Skate 4, or reboot of the franchise, or something else, EA confirmed the Full Circle team will be led by Daniel McCulloch, the former Head of Box Live at Microsoft. Returning Skate producers Deran Chung and Cuz Parry remain on board, having appeared in the Skate sequel’s announcement video at EA Play 2020.

“The fans wished Skate back into existence and we want them to feel involved in the process from development to game launch and beyond. We want them to feel like they are a part of Full Circle,” McCulloch said in a statement accompanying the announcement. “We’re all about having fun and making great games that people want to play with their friends. And, we’re looking for more developers to help us build compelling worlds for players to explore.”

The new studio is currently hiring for various positions including artists, designers, and engineers, and while it’s based in Vancouver, is “embracing a geo-diverse team” with members involved in development “around the globe.”

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Full Circle joins EA Sports and Respawn Entertainment as the third EA Studio in the Canadian city.

Unfortunately, there’s no new word on development on the next Skate thus far, or any additional details about the vision for the upcoming game, but late last year we learned the new Skate may have a focus on user-generated content. At the time, EA’s Andrew Wilson discussed how the new Skate was in “very early development” but that trends within the skateboarding world could fit into the scope of the new game.

“You take a game like Skate, and while skateboarding in and of itself has tremendous appeal to a huge, global audience, there’s another secular trend that’s happening inside our industry around user-generated content, open-world, and interaction,” Wilson said last June. “So for many people, you think about skating as a starting point that has appeal, but you start to build in user-generated content, exploration, and community on top of that and that expands the opportunity exponentially.”

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Jonathon Dornbush is IGN’s Senior News Editor, host of Podcast Beyond!, and PlayStation lead. Talk to him on Twitter @jmdornbush.

The Skate franchise has a new studio that will lead development on the upcoming game, publisher EA confirmed. Called Full Circle, the “geo-diverse” team will be in charge of bringing the iconic skateboarding simulator back to life with a brand-new entry the publisher announced back in June 2020.

Leading Full Circle is studio general manager Daniel McCulloch, the former head of Xbox Live. McCulloch will be joined by Cuz Parry and Deran Chung, who served as the creative forces behind the Skate franchise and integral parts of the development of the three original games. Though based in Vancouver, the team is staffed by employees from around the world to “embrace a geo-diverse team and culture” focused on the next evolution of the Skate series.

In a press release announcing the new studio, McCulloch said Full Circle is looking for more developers to help out with “making great games that people want to play with the friends.”

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The Division 2 is getting its next big update soon, and it includes improvements for people playing on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, new Resident Evil content, and more.

Announced by the game’s community developer on Twitter, title update 12.1 will launch on February 2 with a number of new additions. The patch adds 4K 60 FPS support for The Division 2 on next-gen consoles, while it also introduces the Resident Evil crossover event. The February 2 patch will also rebalance some of the Optimization Station costs.

In February, Ubisoft confirmed that it was not developing a bespoke version of The Division 2 for PS5 and Xbox Series X, with the developer instead focusing on improving the game for existing platforms. This effort is now extended to PS5 and Xbox Series X through next week’s patch.

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