Welcome back to Game Scoop!, IGN’s weekly video game talk show. This week we’re talking Rage 2, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, the Mario movie, and more. Watch the video above or download the podcast below.
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The Division was generally well-liked by critics and it was a commercial success, selling more copies at launch in March 2016 over its first 24 hours than any previous game in Ubisoft history. However, players left the game in part due to its lingering issues and lack of compelling content. To its credit, Ubisoft pushed hard to fix and improve the experience, and it worked to an extent, with the game reaching 20 million registered players by Ubisoft’s count. Given the game’s commercial success, it was unsurprising when a sequel was announced. And now, Ubisoft has spoken about how it plans to do better with The Division 2–right from the start.
“We were surprised a little bit by how fast people consumed content on [The Division 1],” Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said during an earnings call today. “So we’ve been working with the teams to bring a lot of content at launch and to be ready to continue to supply content a lot during the years that follow the launch. We are working hard to make sure we have lots of content available so people can stay in the game for the long run.”
For his part, Ubisoft CFO Alain Martinez said The Division 1’s end-game was not as good as it could have been, and Ubisoft is taking steps to improve this with the sequel.
“Very clearly what we call the end-game part was something that [The Division 1] could have improved, and we believe that we’ve got it now [with The Division 2],” he said.
Martinez added that The Division’s 1.8 update–which overhauled a handful of the game’s systems and added more modes for players craving further variety–was well-received by players. It speaks to Ubisoft’s commitment to improving the game for people still playing.
For The Division 2, Martinez said Ubisoft has the “right tools to deliver a much better game.” Guillemot added that Ubisoft is leveraging all of the experience and feedback it received from The Division 1 to make The Division 2 a “fantastic” game.
The Division 2 is currently in the works at the same primary studios as the first entry, including Massive Entertainment, Red Storm, and Ubisoft Reflections. You’ll be able to transfer some progress from the original game to Division 2, though how that will work is not yet clear. No more details have been discussed; the company says a full reveal is coming at E3 2018.
Like other publishers before it, Ubisoft has now responded to the massive, worldwide success of Epic’s free-to-play battle royale game Fortnite. During an earnings call today, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot started off by confirming that Fortnite–and other battle royale games–have indeed had some kind of impact on Ubisoft. However, this is nothing new in gaming, Guillemot pointed out, and more importantly, it hasn’t stopped Ubisoft’s business from performing well.
“What we see is it has an impact,” Guillemot said about the rise in popularity of battle royale games. “It happens when other games are launched, like when Call of Duty is coming. It has an impact on all the games we have. But it doesn’t stop us to have record revenues and a record number of players playing. We see that all the games we are doing continue to perform very well.”
Ubisoft CFO Alain Martinez added that Rainbow Six Siege had a record number of players during the last quarter, while the team-based shooter also enjoyed “excellent revenue” performance.
For his part, Guillemot added that Fortnite is good for gaming overall and Ubisoft specifically. This is because the game is bringing in new players to gaming, and in particular to the shooter space where Ubisoft does a lot of its business. [It is] good to have new innovation like that,” Guillemot said about Fortnite and other battle royale games. “Showing that we can have even more players playing shooter games.”
As for whether or not Ubisoft might make its own battle royale game or add a battle royale to an existing Ubisoft game, Guillemot teased that it might be in the works. Guillemot said he is aware that battle royale as a mode is “working well for the competition,” adding that Ubisoft’s teams are always “looking at innovation coming from competitors” and thinking about how it can operate in that space as well.
“We are working to make sure we take advantage of it,” Guillemot said about the battle royale experience. “We are working hard to make sure our players can have the benefit of that type of experience.”
He added that Ubisoft’s game engines are “adaptable” and technically capable of delivering a battle royale experience. Right now, Ubisoft is taking time to ensure that the engines can “deliver the technical needs of those types of games.”
“We can’t tell you exactly when it’s coming, and how it will come, but we like when people come with new innovation like this because they show new opportunities for the industry and for our the experiences and worlds that we create,” he said.
Martinez added that it is important for Ubisoft to blaze new trailers, too, and create its own innovation beyond battle royale. He confirmed that Ubisoft’s teams are working on “many projects” in this area because Ubisoft doesn’t want to be a “copy-cat,” but instead create entirely new game modes and player experiences.
Ubisoft’s comments about Fortnite come after those from GTA and Red Dead parent publisher Take-Two, whose CEO said the game has unquestionably had an impact on the gaming industry overall.
In other Ubisoft news, the company has delayed its ambitious pirate game Skull & Bones and confirmed that it will announce a new AAA game at E3.
From the very beginning, one of the biggest questions surrounding Arrow and its various spinoffs has been whether Batman exists in this version of the DC Universe. There’s been an increasing amount of evidence over the years, but confirmation finally arrived with the news that the next Arrowverse crossover will introduce both Gotham City and Batwoman. We still may not actually see Batman on these shows, but at this point there’s little doubt he exists in the Arrowverse.
That’s great news, but it also has some disadvantages. Openly acknowledging the existence of Batman will force Arrow and the other “Arrowverse” shows to answer some difficult questions. Here are just a few problem areas:
Last week it was reported that the much-anticipated action sequel John Wick: Chapter 3 had started shooting, ahead of its release on May 17, 2019. A short teaser has now been tweeted to celebrate the movie’s arrival in exactly one year.
Unsurprisingly there’s not any actual footage, but it’s a very cool teaser and sets a dark, stylish tone. Keanu Reeves, as the reluctant, hunted hitman Wick, stares straight ahead while the rain comes down and the letters JW3 flash ominously. Check it out below:
Be seeing you… 5.17.19. – #JohnWick3 pic.twitter.com/UN2US3UYnf
— John Wick: Chapter 3 (@JohnWickMovie) May 17, 2018
John Wick: Chapter 3 is directed by Chad Stahelski, who helmed last year’s Chapter 2 and co-directed the first movie in 2014. While no cast members beyond Reeves have been announced yet, it’s likely that Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, John Leguizamo, and Laurence Fishburne will all reprise their roles from the previous films.
Last year, Stahelski spoke about his plans for John Wick: Chapter 3. “We want, not so much to go bigger on the third one, but to show you more of the intricacies of the world,” he said. “I feel like there are all these different subtleties that I skipped over in part 2, that I’d like to go back to [with part 3] and show you the inner workings of different parts of New York.”
Development of the long-rumored John Wick TV spin-off The Continental was also confirmed by Starz in January. The channel’s president Chris Albrecht said that the show will “include the thunderous fight sequences and intensely staged shootouts between professional assassins and their targets that fans have come to expect in the John Wick movie franchise as well as introducing some new, darkly compelling characters who inhabit this underground world.” The Continental does not yet have a premiere date.
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On this week’s Xbox show, Alanah, Brandin, and Destin give their impressions of State of Decay 2, and one of our Wiki editors, Jon Ryan, chats about seeing actual Red Dead Redemption 2 gameplay. Thanks to our sponsor this week, Hims. Check ’em out at ForHims.com.
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One of the best things about professional wrestling–the thing that separates it from other scripted dramas and comedies–is that it encourages audience participation. In a traditional theater, you’d get thrown out for speaking above a whisper. But at a professional wrestling show, fans are encouraged to cheer and boo; if you paid for a ticket, it grants you the right to say (not do) whatever you want.
Of course, this privilege cuts both ways; if you decide to troll and heckle the wrestlers, know that the wrestlers can troll and heckle you right back. And unlike you, the wrestlers have a stage and a microphone. Here are 10 times that WWE Superstars owned the fans. Some of these moments were scripted ahead of time. Others were done on the fly. All of them burned like hell.
If you liked this gallery, check out our other galleries on WWE Backstage Punishments, WWE Urban Legends, and Times That WWE Superstars Got Beaten Up In The Ring For Real. Be sure to check back at Gamespot Universe for more wrestling coverage as the Money in the Bank PPV draws closer.
From 2009-2010, Batista’s legendary career hit its peak. He played the heel foil to John Cena’s squeaky clean image. He was all about money and kicking ass, and he had nothing but contempt for Cena’s kid-heavy fanbase. So when a little kid behind the barricade decided to yell “I hate you, Batista” at him, The Animal came back with a vengeance: “I HATE YOU TOO!” Short. Succinct. To the point.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to stoke a home crowd. Insult the sports teams or some local celebrities, and you’re good to go. But Cena’s Chicago promo is a masterclass in drawing real, legitimate hatred from a crowd. Every single insult landed hard, and the booing just got louder.
Near the beginning of his career, John Cena was a trash-talking rapper, and on this particular evening, he performed a freestyle that insulted both Chicago and his opponent, The Undertaker. He manages to squeeze Paul Bearer, necrophilia, the White Sox, the Bulls, Michael Jordan, and the 1871 Chicago Fire into a handful of bars.
There is not enough room in this article describe how witty and hilarious Kevin Owens is as a heel. But here’s one example of how Owens assesses the crowd and finds the best, most cutting way to mess with them.
After insulting an elderly audience member by calling him “grandpa,” Owens then tells the fan that he’ll be dead in five years. Owens caught some hell on social media for the remark, but that’s par for the course; Owens is a traditionalist, and he does his best to live his gimmick in the public eye.
Chris Jericho is so good at ticking off the fans that he’s gotten into a few public confrontations with them. But he’s also talented at tossing out casual one liners. In this clip, an American fan yelled at him, “Go back to Toronto!” and Jericho had the perfect response: “I’m from Winnipeg, you idiot!”
These days, Jericho is so respected, especially after his Festival of Friendship with Kevin Owens, that it would be difficult for him to get boos like this again. After awhile, the fans simply love and appreciate the performers behind the characters, and no storyline can get in the way of that. Still, he did manage to draw heat during his feud with Kenny Omega in NJPW. Jericho might be the rare performer who’s talented enough to overcome his own belovedness.
“Stone Cold” Steve Austin is a WWE legend. But before he retired, he bestowed on WWE what might be the most irritating catchphrase in the history of the business: “What?” It started as a sarcastic, bullying line during the brief time that Austin turned heel. It eventually snowballed into an incessant chant that the fans use, even today, whenever they get bored, regardless of whether Austin is in the ring or even in the building.
It throws off the in-ring performers’ timing and focus. And The Undertaker, who isn’t the best mic worker to begin with, lost his cool with the crowd: “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you say ‘what’ if you like to sleep with your own sister?” The crowd laughed and yelled, “What?” again, and The Undertaker shot a look of contempt and disgust at them.
For the longest time, The Rock was a full-fledged babyface, and his popularity swelled. But in 2003, The Rock had his sights set on mainstream success, and WWE played into the stereotype of a vain, spoiled Hollywood prima donna. All The Rock had to do was turn the volume up on his good-guy persona the slightest bit, and boom, instant boos.
Nowhere is this better exemplified than in this Rock promo, which he cut in Toronto. The Canadian fans loved him when he first came out, but they certainly didn’t love him by the time he finished speaking. In addition to trashing the Maple Leafs, he basked in the fans’ cheers before demeaning their adulation. It was both degrading and brutally effective.
The 1997 Montreal Screwjob, an incident where Shawn Michaels, referee Earl Hebner, Vince McMahon, and others conspired to take the WWE World Heavyweight Championship off Bret Hart, took place over 20 years ago. But it’s still a raw wound, especially for Canadian Hart fans.
Hart buried the hatchet with McMahon and Michaels in 2010. But when Michael cut this promo in 2005–in Montreal, no less–none of the main players were on speaking terms. Michaels did everything he could to offend the Canadian crowd, even singing a parody of “O Canada.” And then, the ultimate troll move: Michael played Bret Hart’s entrance music. The whole building erupted with joy, expecting to see the Hitman appear on the ramp. Nope. It was just a gag, and the disappointed fans quickly turned livid.
One of the Million Dollar Man’s ongoing shticks was to offer fans money to perform humiliating stunts. The following stunt is the most notorious example of this gimmick; many fans believed that Dibiase took things too far. He told a little boy that if he dribbled a basketball 15 times in a row without missing one, he would give him $500. Dibiase then kicked the basketball away after the 14th bounce and sent the kid back to his seat.
In later years, Dibiase admitted that the whole thing was scripted; the boy actually received the money backstage. In fact, Dibiase bumped into the kid in Omaha years later (he had grown to 6’6″ in the meantime) while trying to rent a car. The once little kid had gone to college on a full basketball scholarship and was now the manager of the car rental.
While we’re on the subject of wrestlers making little kids cry, this incident happened recently in 2015. Bayley and Sasha Banks were competing in an Iron Woman match at NXT TakeOver: Respect at Full Sail University. Bayley was the babyface and Banks was the heel–a role she excels at.
Bayley’s biggest fan, Izzy, was in the front row. And Banks, seeing her opportunity to get the crowd heated, grabbed Izzy’s bow off her head and mocked her. Izzy cried, for real, in the audience, and Banks mocked this as well, pretending to cry in the ring. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you play the heel like a Bo$$.
After the show, however, Banks felt bad. She gave Izzy a hug and a bouquet of flowers, which hopefully made up for it.
Along with “What?” the WWE fans also love to chant “CM Punk,” a former superstar who left WWE on horrible terms and was later fired from the company on his wedding day.
It’s a sore spot for the company, and whenever Raw stops in Chicago, Punk’s hometown, the fans make sure to chant his name. In 2016, however, Stephanie McMahon delivered a one-liner in reference to CM Punk’s recent UFC loss: “So if you guys could keep that up for about 2 minutes and 15 seconds, you’d last one second longer than Punk did.” The Chicago immediately fans stopped chanting.
Every year, The CW presents an Arrow-verse crossover, it gets tougher to keep track of, and 2018 will be no different. When Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow return in the fall and start building toward their annual four-show event, a new face and city will enter the fold.
For the first time ever, Batwoman will participate in the crossover and, with her, comes a new setting. “We are adding the city of Gotham into the Arrow-verse,” CW president Mark Pedowitz announced at the network’s upfront presentation to advertisers, according to TVLine. It’s about time.
Arrow star Stephen Amell was on-hand to help announce the big news and said Batwoman will be fighting alongside The CW’s stable of superheroes against the crossover’s currently-unknown villain. This development marks a major shift in the Arrow-verse, which has always been careful to tread lightly around Batman and Gotham City.
While there have been throwaway lines alluding to Batman’s public identity of Bruce Wayne and certain villains from the Dark Knight’s rogues gallery have been featured on the shows–Ra’s al Ghul, for instance–including the city and one of its heroes in such a major role is very different. It’s also incredibly exciting, though. Even Superman has appeared in this universe, so keeping the world of Batman behind a lock and key always felt like something massive was missing.
The move comes at a very interesting time, though. Fox has announced a fifth and final season of Gotham, which essentially tells the origin story of Batman and his most-feared villains, while Epix has ordered a 10-episode series about the early life of Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne’s butler, set in London.
No casting has been announced for Batwoman or anyone else in the annual crossover yet. Additionally, it looks like Black Lightning–another DC Comics TV show on The CW–remains outside of the Arrow-verse and, thus, not included in the event. That could always change, though. After all, Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow are no strangers to the multiverse. Still, even without Black Lightning, it’s hard not to get excited about Gotham City entering this particular TV universe and what that could mean for other characters down the road.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 had its big coming out party today, and Activision marked the event with a lengthy reveal presentation full of individual trailers detailing all the modes. It was quite a bit to keep up with, but fortunately, we’ve gathered them all in one place for your viewing pleasure.
The heart of any Call of Duty game is its multiplayer, so Activision kicked off the proceedings with a lengthy (and suitably flashy) look at its traditional team-based offering.
Zombies Mode Reveal Trailer
The event then moved on to one of the other most popular parts of Call of Duty, the Zombies mode found throughout the Black Ops games. Obviously it’s back again, and this trailer sets the mood. That mood? Punk gladiator supernatural horror.
In case that brief trailer wasn’t enough, we also were treated to an extended story trailer. The Zombies mode has evolved from a multiplayer mode to a full-fledged episodic story over the years, and this trailer gives us a first taste. Metaphorically.
Wrapping up the undead focus was a teaser for Blood of the Dead, an all-new chapter featuring the original zombies cast.
But wait, there’s more! Black Ops 4 is also introducing its own Battle Royale mode, called Blackout. An introductory trailer gave an overview of how pieces of the Black Ops experience are being borrowed and fitted onto a whole new way to play.
Finally, the event wrapped up with one more cinematic trailer: a feel-good bit of encouragement about the magic of teamwork.