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South Park: “Franchise Prequel” Review

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a new South Park video game on the way. And just like last time, the TV series is being used to help sell the game with a convenient tie-in episode. But where the show only loosely tied into South Park: The Stick of Truth with the fantasy-heavy “Black Friday Trilogy,” this time it’s directly setting the stage for the events of South Park: The Fractured but Whole. I don’t know that anyone will miss much by playing the game without watching “Franchise Prequel,” but this episode made for a fun primer all the same.

Presumably, the bones of this episode were planned out well in advance. Trey Parker and Matt Stone needed a storyline that could resurrect the rivalry between Coon & Friends and Professor Chaos and set up the big, Captain America: Civil War-style rift at the end. As far as I could tell, the final scene is identical to the one that was featured in the game’s trailer. But that still left a lot of room for improvisation along the way. And so it was that we not only got some more wacky superhero antics, but also a well-deserved takedown of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

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Mr. Robot Season 3 Premiere Review

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.

Okay, now we should probably start looking at all those internet theories regarding Mr. Robot and time travel, wouldn’t you say?

At the tail end of last season, Mr. Robot began to lean even more heavily into White Rose’s obsession with time and those with power on the series wanting to “hack time.” On top of the show’s background noise of time travel, there are also various multiverse theories, which look to explain many things on the show including Elliot’s own perpetual breaking of the fourth wall and addressing the viewers. Or, as some say, his future self talking to his past self, or his self from a different dimension. There’s a lot to sort though, to say the least.

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Microsoft On Xbox One X — “It’s Not For Everybody”

In just a few weeks, Microsoft will launch a new console in the form of the Xbox One X. A more powerful version of the Xbox One, the system arrives on November 7, priced at $500 in the United States. While Microsoft of course expects it to sell well (the pre-orders are apparently strong already), Xbox boss Phil Spencer has now reiterated that the lower-cost Xbox One S model will remain Microsoft’s best-selling console this generation.

“Xbox One S will be the market leader for us. It’s the more affordable console. It plays all the same games,” Spencer told us at the Brazil Game Show today. “It will be the console that sells.”

The Xbox One X, meanwhile, is aimed at players who are looking for the “very best experience” with a home console. Even if you don’t have a 4K TV, you’ll still see the benefits of the console’s increased horsepower and more, Spencer pointed out. But similar to the Xbox One Elite controller, the Xbox One X won’t be for everyone. It’s all about giving players choice; if they want to spend more for a high-end experience, they can. This has been the setup on PC basically since the start, and now consoles are catching up, starting last year with the PS4 Pro and now the Xbox One X.

“Whether you’re on a 1080p TV or a 4K TV, you’re going to have a great experience. But it’s not for everybody. It’s like when we built the Xbox One Elite controller, we didn’t try to say to everybody, ‘If you need an extra controller, go buy the Elite controller.’ We sold a ton of those controllers. We know in the gaming segment, there are a lot of people who play games casually and there’s also people where gaming is their number one hobby.

“Their number one form of entertainment, and we want to give them the very best experience. I’ve played games in true 4K with HDR, and they look fantastic. But it doesn’t mean everybody has to do that. So we’re giving gamers a choice. Whether we’ve pushed the innovation too far? It’s hard to do that with gamers. I guess we’ll see; I feel very confident in the product we have coming to market.”

Are you going to pick up an Xbox One X next month? Let us know in the comments below! And for lots more on our conversation with Spencer, see the stories linked below.

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Xbox Exec Speaks Out Against Exclusive DLC And Recognizes The Irony In Saying That

Speaking to GameSpot today at the Brazil Game Show, Xbox boss Phil Spencer spoke out against the idea of companies like Microsoft paying to secure exclusive content in games. He immediately recognises the irony of this situation, given that Microsoft had the timed-exclusive deal with Call of Duty before it shifted to Sony. The company is also working with Activision on a timed-exclusivity deal for Destiny 2, while Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 will have some content that’s exclusive to PS4, at least for a time.

But on Microsoft’s side, it sounds like you shouldn’t expect these kinds of deals to happen on Xbox. “People always knock me on this; I’ve been on record… I don’t love the idea or practice of us paying so other platforms can’t play or use a certain gun in a game or do a certain level,” he said. “I know I say that and, Xbox history–DLC exclusivity windows with Call of Duty–I understand the fingers are pointing right back to Xbox. I can only be who I am. It’s not the best PR answer. But I don’t like that.”

In terms of timed-exclusives for full games, Microsoft recently reached a deal with PUBG developer Bluehole to bring the game to Xbox One this year as a “console launch exclusive.” It could very well come to PlayStation 4 at some point down the road, but no announcements have been made about that. Microsoft’s deal with Bluehole, which presumably includes funds to help support the game’s development (and may reportedly get extended), is part of Microsoft’s aim to make the “best games possible” for Xbox.

“People ask, when’s that coming to PlayStation? I’ve got a deal, working with [Bluehole] to build the very best version of PUBG,” he said. “That’s where I am focused. Right now, we’re helping that game come to console. Our focus is on making the best games possible.”

Another recent example of a exclusivity deal Microsoft made is with StudioMHR for the well-received and very difficult platformer/run-and-gunner Cuphead. The game is exclusive on console to Xbox One forever (though it is also available on PC). It is never coming to PlayStation 4. Spencer said Microsoft invested in Cuphead because it saw potential in the title and wanted to help make it all that it could be.

“When there are games that come along, Cuphead is a good example, and the team had certain ambition about what they wanted to go do,” he said. “And together with them we wanted to invest more. We saw more opportunity. And what that turned into was us having an exclusive game on our platform. That’s a game that probably wouldn’t have happened the way it did if we didn’t invest the way we did.”

Console exclusives are a way to drive sales of a particular system. Microsoft has Halo and Gears of War and Forza, while Sony has Uncharted, God of War, Killzone, and others, just to name a few. While there will probably always be full exclusives like these, Spencer said the future of gaming lies in games that may not necessarily be tied to a specific device.

“If you define the gaming market as console and that’s all you’re focused on, then maybe that’s an important part of the business consideration,” Spencer said about console-exclusives driving system sales. “I’d say one of the reasons PC is still so strong, is because it’s an open platform. Through things like cross-play we’re working to allow people to play games together regardless of where you bought the games. if you’re really about trying to drive just a specific device and say I just looked at the gaming opportunity all up as a single device opportunity, maybe that’s an approach. We don’t see it that way.

“When we look at things that are really large in gaming today, we look at Twitch, Steam, PUBG, Minecraft. People on Minecraft on Switch are playing with people on an iPhone. They don’t own a Windows machine or an Xbox. But they own our game or are using Xbox Live across multiple devices, that’s what gaming in the future is about. Getting caught in a definition of gaming that’s about me trying to do everything I can to get you to buy one specific device to play one specific variant of games, is not really about growing the business.”

For lots more on our conversation with Spencer, see the stories linked below, and come back soon to check out the full Q&A.

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Xbox One’s Original Xbox Backwards Compatibility Still Coming This Year

One of the pleasant surprises Microsoft had in store for E3 this year was the announcement of Xbox One backwards compatibility support for original Xbox games. At the Brazil Game Show, we caught up with Xbox boss Phil Spencer, who provided some insight into where things stand with the upcoming feature.

“We’re close, we’re really close,” Spencer said when asked for the status of Xbox backwards compatibility. “I have a little dashboard I go to and I can see all the games [and] where they are in getting approvals in the pipeline. I know the games that are coming for the original Xbox but I don’t think we’ve announced them all. We have to do this in partnership with partners, but we’re still on track. I feel really good. The games look great.”

Spencer also remains confident that the feature will be out before the end of the year, as planned. “Oh yeah,” he said about his certainty of a 2017 launch. He also teased that there are still details about backwards compatibility will work on Xbox One X that have yet to be revealed: “There’s some stuff we’re going to talk about in that space in terms of how compatibility’s going to work on [Xbox One] X specifically that I think people will find pretty interesting.

“Some of the games hold up really well; some of them don’t. But the gameplay mechanics and the smile [you got] on your face 15 years ago playing those games, those are things that are still there. I see it, like getting back to playing Crimson Skies, [it’s] fantastic, and the game actually looks really good even though it’s obviously been around.”

Spencer mentioning Crimson Skies is expected, as it’s only one of two games–along with Fuzion Frenzy–that have been confirmed as part of the program. “We have multiple games up and running–we just decided to tease the first one[s],” Microsoft executive Dave McCarthy explained about Microsoft’s E3 reveal of the first two games. “There will be a library of games available, for sure.” However, you shouldn’t expect the library to be as big as that of Xbox 360 backwards compatible games.

For lots more on our conversation with Spencer, see the stories linked below, and come back soon to check out the full Q&A.

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