Month: February 2021

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FIFA 21 Coming to Stadia in March, EA Extends Exclusive UEFA License

FIFA 21 is coming to Stadia in March, and EA has extended its exclusive license to UEFA content, including the Champions League and Europa League competitions.

A press release from Electronic Arts reveals that FIFA 21 will come to Google Stadia on March 17, as part of EA’s plan to make FIFA games accessible across more platforms. That comes alongside expanding release regions for FIFA Online 4 – a free-to-play, downloadable version of the core game currently only available in Asia. The company is also working on “multiple in-development mobile offerings” under the FIFA brand.

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The news also included the announcement of a multiyear license extension brokered between UEFA and EA Sports which resecures FIFA’s exclusive license to the UEFA Champions League, the UEFA Europa League and the UEFA Super Cup tournaments in-game. EA first picked up the UEFA license in 2018, bringing to a close Pro Evolution Soccer’s 10-year partnership with the organisation.

According to EA, the FIFA franchise has now sold more than 325 million units over its lifetime. Check out our review of FIFA 21, which we scored a 7, calling it a “year of small improvements.” You can also find out the six key differences seen in the FIFA 21 next-gen patch, which launched on PS5 and Xbox Series consoles in December.

In other Google Stadia news, Google recently revealed that it is shutting down its internal game studios in Los Angeles and Montreal, impacting 150 employees.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

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Nintendo Reportedly Canceled a Zelda Netflix Series After It Leaked

Nintendo reportedly scrapped a live-action Legend of Zelda series with Netflix after news of the project leaked and circulated online.

As reported by Eurogamer, US comedian Adam Conover, who was working on a secret Star Fox claymation project around the same time, revealed that Nintendo canceled its proposed slate of video game adaptations with Netflix after someone from the company allegedly spread the word about the Zelda series. The Wall Street Journal shared details of the adaptation and Nintendo rescinded the show.

“Suddenly there were reports Netflix wasn’t going to do its Legend of Zelda anymore,” Conover recently recalled, speaking on The Serf Times podcast. “I was like ‘what happened?’ And then I heard from my boss we weren’t doing our Star Fox anymore. I was like ‘what happened?’ He was like, ‘someone at Netflix leaked the Legend of Zelda thing.’ They weren’t supposed to talk about it, Nintendo freaked out… and they pulled the plug on everything, the entire programme to adapt these things.”

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News of the prospective live-action Legend of Zelda series with Netflix hit headlines back in 2015 when “a person familiar with the matter” reportedly told WSJ that the streamer had described the upcoming show as “Game of Thrones for a family audience,” with a story that would follow Link’s conquest to save Princess Zelda and the land of Hyrule. However, little more was said after that.

In the years since then, video game adaptations have become big business on Netflix as the games market has experienced rapid growth, and interest in gaming has exploded even more so during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Netflix wants to be the service that players turn to when they need to take a break from gaming, and the streamer is making big moves to make it happen.

For more on Tomb Raider, Assassin’s Creed, and other video game projects, check out our slideshow below or click through to our article about why we think Netflix is the best place for video game adaptations.

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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

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PlayStation Wrap Up Returns With Your 2020 PS5 and PS4 Gaming Stats

The PlayStation Wrap Up, a breakdown of all the hours played, Trophies earned, and more, returns to deliver all your 2020 gaming stats, including any time your account has spent on PS5 so far.

You can head to the official PlayStation Wrap Up site to get your breakdown of PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 games you’ve played.

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PS4 stats are the primary focus, with the number of games and hours played, your top played games, hours spent locally vs. online, your average playtime every day of the week, and more. The Wrap Up also includes some generalized stats pulling from all PS4 player data for games like The Last of Us Part 2, Ghost of Tsushima, and MLB: The Show 20.

Additionally, PS5 owners will see some stats as well, like top game and hours spent with it, total hours played, and the number of PS5-specific trophies earned.

Players can also grab a free dynamic PS4 theme in honor of the Wrap Up. To actually access the information as well, PlayStation requires players to have a registered PSN account, be 18 years or older, and have at least played on a PS4 for 10 hours during the last calendar year.

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PlayStation’s Wrap Up returns after previously offering players a look at Trophies, top games, and more for 2019.

And while you’re looking back at your PlayStation past, don’t forget to look ahead to what’s to come, including the current state of PlayStation studios and their active projects, the biggest games coming in 2021, and why PS5’s 2021 lineup has us so excited. And for the latest on all things PlayStation, be sure to watch our weekly PlayStation show, Podcast Beyond!

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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.

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Scientists Have Taught Spinach to Send Emails When They Detect Landmines

Scientists have managed to engineer spinach plants to send emails when they detect explosive materials – and social media is delighted.

Euronews picked up its trowel and dug through a Nature journal entry to provide details of the nanotechnology that has been used to transform wild-type plants, such as spinach, into infrared communication platforms capable of sending information to computers and smartphones through a process of sensor detection and wireless relay.

MIT engineers experimented within a niche field of science known as “plant nanobionics” and discovered that, per the report, spinach roots can “detect the presence of nitroaromatics in groundwater, a compound often found in explosives like landmines, the carbon nanotubes within the plant leaves emit a signal.” This signal can then be picked up by an infrared camera, sending an email to alert scientists.

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“Plants are very good analytical chemists. They have an extensive root network in the soil, are constantly sampling groundwater, and have a way to self-power the transport of that water up into the leaves,” Professor Michael Strano, who led the research, explained to the outlet. “This is a novel demonstration of how we have overcome the plant/human communication barrier.”

Initially, the research was conducted to understand whether wild-type plants could be bioengineered to detect explosive materials, however, scientists now believe that the nanotech could be stretched further afield, whilst still remaining in the field, to engineer plants to warn researchers about pollution and other potential environmental issues.

The experiment findings were published in 2016 but the research recently resurfaced in headlines, sparking interest amongst social media users who immediately got the topic trending on Twitter.

For more technological developments and real-world discoveries, read about a new “cyborg” technology that is now one step closer to becoming a reality, find out more about Microsoft’s patent filing to create chatbots that imitate dead people, and then check out this study about how brains process visual communication in films.

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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

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Perfect Dark Design Director Leaves The Initiative

The Design Director of Perfect Dark studio The Initiative has announced that he is leaving the project.

The Initiative’s Drew Murray revealed the news on Twitter (as spotted by VGC). Murray previously worked on Resistance, Ratchet & Clank and Sunset Overdrive at Insomniac Games before leaving in 2018 to help kickstart the Microsoft first-party studio. He is leaving to focus on his “life outside of work” and tweeted that the goodbye felt bittersweet after working with “such a talented and experienced team.”

“The team has the vision and talent to knock the game and franchise out of the park,” Murray tweeted in regards to the future of the project, noting that the reveal trailer still gives him goosebumps. Interestingly, Murray points out that, when he joined The Initiative, he wasn’t aware that the team would be working on a Perfect Dark game.

Murray says that the silver lining of this is that he will get to experience Perfect Dark as a fan on launch day. The Perfect Dark reboot project was announced in December of 2020 during The Game Awards and is promising to deliver an “eco sci-fi” first-person shooter. You can learn more about the game in our coverage of its reveal.

Santa Monica-based studio The Initiative was revealed by Microsoft in 2018 and famously described as looking for ‘AAAA’ standards in job listings. The development team is currently being led by Darrell Gallagher, a veteran of Rockstar Games, Crystal Dynamics and Activision where he worked on games such as GTA IV and Tomb Raider.

God of War Lead Producer Brian Westergaard and Red Dead Redemption Lead Writer Christian Cantamessa are also working at The Initiative, most likely contributing to Perfect Dark. It’s part of Microsoft’s growing roster of studios following its recent acquisition of Zenimax Media.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.