Nintendo Switch Sales Pass 32 Million

The Nintendo Switch is continuing its successful run as sales of Nintendo’s latest console have surpassed 32 million units since its launch on March, 3, 2017.

Nintendo announced the news this morning and confirmed that, as of December 31, 2018, the Nintendo Switch sold 32.27 million units and software sales for the console have reached 163.61 million units.

The Switch sold 14.49 million units between April and December of 2018 and, as of October, Nintendo confirmed Switch was at 22 million units sold. These sales numbers helped the Switch become the best-selling console of 2018 and become the best-selling Nintendo console during a Thanksgiving weekend in the U.S.

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Nintendo Releases New Sales Figures for Pokemon Let’s Go, Smash Bros. Ultimate, Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Nintendo has released sales figures for its top-selling titles across the Switch and 3DS consoles.

The official Nintendo website shows the figures for the best selling titles on all of its consoles. It’s worth noting that these numbers likely reflect the number of units sold to stock stores, rather than those that were actually sold through and picked up by consumers.

For the Nintendo Switch, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe leads the pack with 15.02 million units and is followed closely by Super Mario Odyssey at 13.76 million. The recently released Super Smash Bros. Ultimate comes in at 12.08 million units and was the best selling game in December 2018, selling over 3 million units in the first 11 days.

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Sea of Thieves Cross-Play Will Be Optional Between Xbox One And PC

As Rare’s high-seas adventuring game Sea of Thieves approaches the first anniversary of its release, the studio has addressed some player feedback. In the hopes of balancing and providing consistently enjoyable content for players in its open-world sandbox, the developer took to YouTube to announce that, in a future update, Xbox One and PC cross-play will be optional.

In an official developer update, Sea of Thieves’ executive producer, Joe Neate, talked at length about the developer’s plans for changing the way cross-play works between the platforms. While Neate acknowledged that cross-play has brought many benefits to Sea of Thieves, he admitted that, with the game’s new PvP mode, Arena, on the way, he wants everyone to feel that “they have a level playing field.”

In this forthcoming Sea of Thieves update, console players using a controller will have the option to only matchmake with other controller users on console, effectively splitting the player base as such: a controller-only pool and the cross-play pool. The cross-play pool is just as it sounds: any user who wants to play with anyone, regardless of controller input, will be able to do so. According to Neate, players will be able to toggle the option on and off at will. The option, as Neate confirmed, will be available whether players enter free-play or the game’s upcoming Arena mode.

In addition to the option of cross-play in Sea of Thieves, Neate announced that mouse-and-keyboard input will makes its way to the game on console. Neate didn’t provide a release window for when this update will hit the game, nor did he specify when this cross-play update will hit the game. However, Neate did confirm that Rare has discussed optional cross-play at length internally and the studio’s already hard at work on implementing the update.

In our Sea of Thieves review, we said that, at the time of launch, “it’s a somewhat hollow game that can be fun for a handful of hours when played with friends, and something worth trying out if you happen to be an Xbox Game Pass subscriber.” Our reviewer, Peter Brown, continued, “Even though it’s hard to wholeheartedly recommend, I like enough of what I see to hold out hope that things will eventually improve as the game continues to be patched and updated with new content.”

Stephen King’s The Stand Becomes CBS All Access Series

Acclaimed writer Stephen King’s no stranger to his work getting adapted to the big screen. From It to The Dark Tower, King’s work has made the jump from words to visuals since the 70s. Now as detailed by the Hollywood Reporter, another novel from King’s expansive bibliography is set to hit the big screen.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, CBS All Access has ordered a 10-episode, straight-to-series adaptation of King’s best-selling post-apocalyptic epic, The Stand. The drama will see a script penned by Josh Boone (All We Had, The Fault in Our Stars), who was initially scheduled to write a feature film based on the 1978 epic. Ben Cavell (Justified, SEAL Team) is reportedly writing The Stand’s script alongside Boone.

Both Boone, who will also direct, and Cavell will write and executive produce this King adaptation. Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee (Death Note, The Disaster Artist) and Mosaic’s Jimmy Miller (Bad Teacher, Semi-Pro) will also executive produce The Stand. Richard P. Rubinstein (Dawn of the Dead, Dune)–who served as a producer on several King adaptions throughout the 80s and 90s, including Golden Years, Thinner, and a 1994 mini-series of The Stand–is confirmed to executive produce the CBS drama with Boone, Cavell, Lee, and Miller. Will Weiske (Bridge of Spies, Her) and Miri Yoon (Behaving Badly, Death Note) will co-executive producer the drama. As the Hollywood Reporter states, Owen King, Stephen King’s son, will produce.

”I’m excited and so very pleased that The Stand is going to have a new life on this exciting new platform,” King said. “The people involved are men and women who know exactly what they’re doing; the scripts are dynamite. The result bids to be something memorable and thrilling. I believe it will take viewers away to a world they hope will never happen.”

Stephen King’s The Stand, a novel almost as long as David Foster Wallace’s 1996 epic Infinite Jest, expands on King’s Night Surf, a short story published in an issue of Ubris magazine in the spring of 1969. The nearly 1000-page novel imagines the total breakdown of society after a modified version of the flu used for biological warfare is accidentally released. This causes widespread panic, triggering an apocalyptic pandemic that wipes out the majority of the world’s human population.

The TV series will see the fate of mankind rest of the shoulders of a few of the survivors of the pandemic. With the world caught in an elemental struggle between good and evil, the nightmares of the remnants of humanity are embodied in Randall Flagg, the Dark Man, an individual with unspeakable powers.

Along with The Stand, CBS All Access’ roster includes Star Trek: Discovery (which launched its second season on January 17), The Twilight Zone, Why Women Kill, and more.

Mario Kart Tour Delayed to Summer 2019

Nintendo’s upcoming Mario Kart mobile game Mario Kart Tour has been delayed until later this year.

Financial highlights from Nintendo reveal the game, which was originally slated to release before March 2019, has been pushed back to “summer 2019,” which ranges between June and September in the Northern Hemisphere.

According to Nintendo, the delay is “in order to improve quality of the application and expand the content offerings after launch.”

“As we endeavor to develop future planned applications, we will also focus on continued service operations for applications that have already been released so that consumers can enjoy playing them for a long time,” Nintendo’s statement adds.

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