Julius

Villarreal looked exhausted from the off in this second half, not surprised Liverpool have pegged them back with how sluggish they've been since coming out of the tunnel. We'll see what happens in the remaining 20'+, but it's not looking great - shame as well, because they did such a good job of sticking it to Liverpool in the first half. Hopefully whoever Liverpool face in the final (if nothing crazy happens) is taking notes. One of those games where Liverpool's match fitness and experience from regularly going deep into this competition now and pulling out late results has played perfectly in their favour with Villarreal's relative inexperience and fitness at this stage. Reminds me a lot of how steeply Atlético fell off in the 13/14 final against Real as the match went on. EDIT: embarrassing for Villarreal now, I do feel for them. But that's football. What the hell happened in that changing room at half-time? It's like they've had their wings clipped.

Now under development at the hands of Ubisoft Montreal: Yeah, this could be a while.

Spring update with difficulty options is out now: I'll probably be checking it out at some point over the summer and trying the original difficulty, but I'm glad the option is there for those that want more options. Still think it should be assessed and catered for on a case-by-case basis, mind you.

A few more Atlus and NIS America games are now on sale on the eShop until May 8th:

Where exactly are you sourcing these numbers from? We don't have hard numbers on the Xbox One, only estimates, and I'm not denying that the PS3 + 360 sold more than PS4 + One, what I'm saying is that the One flopped, meaning what you see is not a trend, but a result which was bound to happen given that Xbox and Microsoft did the console no favours; again, down to poor messaging, a lacking library of games (especially on the first party side of things, and especially at launch), etc. A flop like that is not necessarily the sign of a trend, and would be accounted for when trying to determine if there is a trend. Last time Sony reported PS3 sales was March 31st 2017 at 87.4 million units sold. Shipments to Japanese retails ceased by May of that same year, and that was the last market where the PS3 was being shipped. Last time Xbox reported 360 sales was June 9th 2014 when they were at 84+ million units sold. Statista seems keen to say that they're at 85.8 million units sold. That's PS3 + 360 at 173.2 million units sold lifetime in reports from start to finish, and that's using Statista's number to potentially go over the official number on the 360. PS4 was at 116.9 million units sold as of December 31st 2021. The estimated sales of the Xbox One as of Q2 2020 by Ampere was 51 million units, which I'm not really comfortable using, but considering that we haven't had official sales figures of the Xbox One since October 2015, it's probably the best we have to go off. Combined that's roughly 167.9 million units, within range of your 165 - 170 million units that you stated - but it's just over 5 million away from the combined sales of the PS3 and Xbox 360, not 15 - 20 million. And that's with one of the consoles flopping so hard they stopped reporting sales and haven't done so since. PS3 lifetime software sales were 999.4 million units as of March 31st 2019. Xbox 360 software sales can only be estimated at best, because Microsoft love to be difficult. VGSales try to estimate software sales at some 630 million units...but their logic is all over the place, such as using an attach rate stated as being 8.9 by Microsoft in 2010 and then applying it to 2013's numbers to calculate software sales in the US. They then use an NPD attach rate for Europe. Again, it's a mess, I don't want to use it as evidence of anything, because concrete it is not. I'd want to suggest we just use the same number for PS3 as we do Xbox - they're so close in hardware sales, after all, and both had opposite journeys during the course of that generation - but yeah, it's not a perfect way to make a point. For the PS4 - I hate to use them as a source, but ResetEra used to be great for quarterly and annual financial breakdowns - it is the console with the most software sales to date, at 1.622 billion units, more than the 1.537 billion units of the PS2, and that's with some 50 million fewer consoles sold. And that was reported in April 2021, it's likely grown more since then. Again, it's impossible to find anything for the Xbox One as they report software revenue. VGSales tries to estimate that it's 204.36 million units, but again I doubt it, and besides, the console was a flop so they pulled the plug when it came to massive effort first party titles and you've also got to take the existence and prevalence of Game Pass towards the end of the generation - after it launched around halfway through - into account. It was never going to be a fair comparison. But there's nothing here which makes me say for a fact that PS3 + 360 sales are significantly greater than that of the PS4 + One sales, as you say is the case -- we just don't have that written as hard fact. Even if we're generous and say the 360 software sales were equal to the PS3's (and, to be clear, that's only really generous compared to the estimate VGSales tries to enforce), to put their combined total to around 2 billion units of software sold, the PS4 alone gets you over 80% of the way to that total. Honestly, all it really shows is that Microsoft don't like to share sales numbers (which is frustrating for me as someone who loves to see them), and just reinforces how much of a flop the Xbox One was, emphasised by the success of the PS4. That there isn't a substantial drop-off despite one console in that generation really dropping off, when they were virtually at parity just a generation prior, is a testament to how well the PS4 did in getting PlayStation back on the right track by their own metrics. Now, if you really want to talk about drop-offs, how about we talk about Wii + DS vs Wii U + 3DS? I mean, while I don't think you're massively off the pace by pointing out how big some of these other corners of gaming are, making sweeping generalisations is rough when we haven't really had a chance to see how this younger demographic engage with and impact the wider gaming industry. The next 5-10 years are going to be really interesting to follow, I think. The only reason I say this is because, anecdotally, I've seen and heard a massive shift from my younger brother over the last few years. He's 15 now, and he and his friends have grown up on mobile games, Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, Among Us - you name that mainstream thing that has all of us here going "huh, that's what the kids are playing these days?!", and they've probably played it - but in recent years have been looking for more and more things which are deeper than these ahem "more approachable" games. That's not to say that they've necessarily stopped playing those other games, but it's given them a foundational interest in games where if they do play something deeper, they kind of end up craving more. Again, totally anecdotal, but my younger brother borrows more and more games from me every time he pops around, talks more and more about indie and AAA games than he ever has before, and seems to be slowly moving from these more approachable games to more focused and deeper experiences in gaming, as are his friends. I'm not saying that's a huge sign of anything changing on a wide scale, but I think it's something worth considering when we talk about this new generation as if they are just going to stick with these "more approachable" games for life. Worth pointing out, too, that some of those friends of his are girls. Things aren't as rigid as I feel they once were, and you see it in a lot of things these days, such as the globalisation of anime. You have no idea how weird it was for me to get on a bus a few years ago and hear these high school kids dressed like they were about to harass people so casually and openly - and annoyingly loudly - talking about a slice-of-life anime. Also, final thing regarding what you said that's worth bearing in mind when it comes to YouTube and Twitch with this new generation: for a lot of them, YouTube is to them what TV was to me growing up, and Twitch is to them what YouTube was to me growing up. I don't think it's impacting their actual time spent playing (other than cases where a kid might not be able to afford a game?) and I actually think it's time being taken away from elsewhere (TV). Gee there's no explanation at all for...oh wait...hold up... These next-gen consoles are still out of stock more often than they are in stock. You know just as well as I do just how massive an impact COVID and the parts shortage has had not just on gaming, but on every consumer electronics industry, so I don't see why you're even trying to compare the two. I'll always go back to this, as I think it's the best example: in summer 2020, Sony forecast having 15 million units sold by the end of March 2021. Then in September, this was reduced to 11 million units sold by the end of March 2021. And then again down to 6.5 million units by the end of March 2021 in early 2021. These being forecasts, they were always meant to undercut the actual sales figures, and the actual sales landed at 7.8 million units sold in that period. It still outsold the PS4 despite there being nearly half as many PS5 units shipped as initially intended, and remains virtually impossible for many to just casually get their hands on. But sure, let's act as if a worldwide pandemic and parts shortage has had no impact To clarify, what I meant, and what I think we both agree on is: Xbox are there, Sony have positioned themselves to be there, but they aren't at the same stage as Xbox yet. It's why there's a lot of "we're not doing that...yet" when it comes to their plans for the new PS+ and talks about first party games landing Day 1. They're going to pull that trigger hard, but they need to lay the foundation first, and like you say, getting games on PC is a great way to do that. To be clear, though, that is a smart business decision regardless of hardware sales: there are simply far more PCs out there than there are consoles, why wouldn't you start bringing your games which have broken sales records with a smaller install base to a much larger install base? Let's not forget that, unlike Nintendo, PlayStation is part of a larger company which has depended on them increasingly over the last decade.

Potential spoiler floating around after an interview with one of the Italian dub voice actors for the first Breath of the Wild:

I'm not sure how much truth there is in that, because I don't think anyone's got the overall numbers to back a statement like this up. I actually think gaming is continuing to become more mainstream in areas where it wasn't before (i.e. we're getting more older and more female gamers), but that's anecdotal, and I have nothing too concrete to back it up. Also isn't it a contradiction to say that they've failed to bring in new audiences, but then talk about how the demographic outside of males aged 10-25 is growing? Couldn't it also just be a case of said demographic sliding into the next demographic range (i.e. 25 -39 males)? PlayStation did better with the PS4 than they did with the PS3 and Vita combined, though, and have also broken consoles sales records despite the components shortage with the PS5? And I also feel like just looking at the numbers of console sales doesn't cut it here, context is informative as to what's going on with console sales, because we've seen a lot of stupid decisions made over the last few generations. PS3 picked up ground towards the end of the generation, but it flopped early on and didn't find it's footing due to poor messaging on their side, launching at too high a price, Japanese companies having difficulties adjusting to HD productions, etc. The 360 lost ground towards the end of the generation and the PS3 even hopped over it in sales. The Wii dropped off a cliff because there were no big first party games as the end of its life drew closer. The Vita flopped hard; the Wii U flopped hard; this wasn't due to them following a trend, they were just extremely poorly communicated to their audiences and arguably didn't have compelling libraries at launch, and so the Vita found itself depending on the Japanese portable audience whereas Nintendo shrunk back into their shell as they lost most of their third party partnerships that they'd secured on the Wii. The 3DS was a moderate success in a period where it basically had no right to be, but there just wasn't space for the dedicated portable. The Xbox One had messaging and PR so bad that they had to drop the bundled Kinect within a year of launch and straight up stopped reporting hardware unit sales halfway through the generation, because they were being outperformed almost 2:1 by PlayStation and were being utterly embarrassed. To this day they themselves still don't report on hardware unit sales, though these days it can be argued that console sales aren't their focus anyways, what with their attention turning to Game Pass. I'd argue what your noticing is one third of the platform holders in Xbox not reporting anything and falling off a cliff last generation. That's not really a trend as such, they just did really poorly with the Xbox One, and are still recovering. PS4 killed it last generation. The PS5 and Xbox Series X|S are killing it now. PSVR was a moderate success for what it was trying to accomplish, and I'm sure we'll see growth with the PSVR2. The Switch is absolutely killing it. I feel like most here - and basically anyone who follows gaming news and follows game releases - have been noticing this. AA is pretty much dead at the highest level of publishing in a way where it was not last generation. We've seen studios shutter across the board who weren't contributing to AAA development and were seen as being surplus to success (Japan Studio in particular comes to mind on the PlayStation side of things, and Nintendo let AlphaDream die a cold and miserable death). Everyone and their mother has been rambling on about the lack of true next-gen exclusives. And again, Xbox doesn't really help here, because now they report the number of players for a game (i.e. 20 million people have played Halo Infinite! - awesome, but how what's the split?) rather than actual sales. I feel like we're only really looking closely at first parties here, though, which seems a bit dishonest on the whole. I'd argue the industry just experienced it's busiest quarter in terms of releases to date, ranging from indie all the way up to AAA, and a lot of smaller titles continue to cross that 1 million units sold threshold, which would have been crazy not too long ago. The big companies are veering - and arguably have always veered - towards AAA and pumping all their money there, but the entire industry they are not. Again, for the moment, I feel like this mainly only describes Xbox. Halo, Gears of War, and Forza are their only true AAA tentpoles, so I think scooping up IP in acquisitions for Game Pass production and pumping millions into those and reboots of their existing legacy catalogue makes sense. Will it work out for them? It has been, but not off the back of any of their acquisitions just yet, as we still need to see how curation is handled. PlayStation are positioning themselves there as any company would do after seeing Xbox lay the groundwork - and have huge success - with Game Pass. PlayStation have had PlayStation Now, but they never pushed it like Xbox have Game Pass, and now Game Pass has done them kind of a huge favour in making game streaming and having a "Netflix of games" become mainstream. And Nintendo, as always, are being Nintendo about this. I have many concerns about subscription models for games and game libraries, but they don't revolve around the death of AAA in that it's going away, despite there likely needing to be changes, and so you're right in that I think the traditional AAA game - high budget games some 15-30 hours in length - could quickly go away as and when PlayStation decide to flip the switch. I think we're probably going to see more games with AAA budgets (makes sense, you need a lot of tentpoles in a service to keep people subscribed), but the experiences are just going to be much shorter than we'd typically expect. To make a service/subscription model work in the long run you need two things in terms of your exclusives compared to other competing services: high quality output at a high volume. We'll have to wait and see, but I'm hesitant to say I'm excited to see how this all shakes out

Hearing Embracer pick up companies big and small, left and right across the industry in a warm embrace in podcasts the last few years has been very disturbing, but I don't think this is too much of a surprise (heck I think they even warned everyone that they were buying more studios just a few months ago). Square Enix have always had stupidly high standards when it comes to sales expectations, and time and time again they were grossly overestimating the sales potential of series under their western flag, like Tomb Raider, Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy, which were frequently pointed to as disappointments in their earnings reports. Worth mentioning that IP like Just Cause, Life is Strange and Outriders remain under Square Enix. Also, the follow-up tweet by Wario64 is also cause for concern about where this money is going to end up being invested by Square Enix: Also, if we want to talk about game development being unsustainable: Embracer had 6400+ employees and 216 games in development (149 of those being unannounced titles!) back in February of this year. Their CEO has talked before about how making do many games reduces the risk, so yeah, make of that what you will. With how much money is being thrown around in these acquisitions these days, I'd never say never, but it would still take a fair bit to pick them up -- it's not like Embracer have bought even half of Square Enix with the acquisitions they've made. Personally, I hope PlayStation don't pick them up. Square Enix already has great deals going on where they're selling exclusivity/timed exclusivity on AAA projects to PlayStation which would perform far better on PlayStation than Xbox anyways, and once those deals are up, they then cheekily put deals together with Xbox to have these games on Game Pass for a time. Definitely more likely that they go to PlayStation than Xbox, though. Not that a move to Xbox is impossible, but it's just so rare that Japanese companies are picked up in international acquisitions anyways, and there are additional hurdles to jump through. We'll see, but yeah, I don't like the direction this is all taking, but I guess at least this acquisition wasn't by s platform holder

Yeah Beastars is great @Glen-i, glad to hear you liked it! Personally I preferred the first season to the second season, as I think it handled it's mystery a bit better, but I still enjoyed it. And yeah, the S1 OP is an awesome piece of art unto itself, shame they didn't stick with that style for S2's! You're in luck, as it was announced back in July of last year: And then they said it was the final season... ...which seems to have caused some concern for manga readers, as apparently what's left in the manga after S2 is basically half of the story - could be a longer season or potentially a Part 1 and Part 2 scenario? Who knows This Twitter thread from Paru Itagaki (the creator of Beastars) adds a bit to the confusion too: I haven't following Netflix's show cancellations too closely, but I don't recall seeing any anime shows they're licensing being on the chopping block (which makes sense, the entire industry has been growing almost exponentially the last few years), not to mention that Netflix need to hold onto what little they have in the industry since Sony purchasing Crunchyroll has basically killed competition in the western market. But yeah, @Jonnas is right in saying that Netflix only license the show, as it's made by Studio Orange. While the anime industry has been booming, it's still extremely archaic in structure (as we'd all probably expect after seeing how Nintendo handle themselves, Japan just does things...differently): while Studio Orange create the show, they have no true ownership of it, as Netflix license the show from the production company who commissioned it, which in the case of Beastars is a pretty long list of what almost reads like a committee, and which includes Bandai and Toho.

Nintendo is expecting to report an overall decrease in Switch hardware sales of 10% as a result of the ongoing components shortage, ahead of their end of year report. From Nikkei: No surprise there. I still think there's some logic in the speculation that the direction that the Switch OLED eventually took was as a result of these shortages, and while it does seem to be slowly improving, it makes it even tougher than usual to predict Nintendo's plans for the Switch successor and it's rollout.

Mino Raiola, agent to a huge list of talent (Ibra, Haaland, Pogba, Verratti, and de Ligt to name a few) and arguably the biggest agent currently working in football alongside Jorge Mendes, has passed away at 54: Been a rollercoaster of a story the last few days with some claiming he had passed before an outright denial, and then this. Say what you will about his agent fees/add-ons, he knew how he valued himself, and it's always a shock to lose anyone at just 54.

Let's go again (again): Licensing IP definitely makes sense, feels like they've slowed down massively over the last few years with all of this background noise going on around WB. I can definitely imagine WB higher-ups looking at how well Spider-Man has done as a licensed IP and wondering why they don't just do that with their plethora of IP, instead of taking the risk and financial responsibility of seeing projects through from start to finish.

I haven't! Always been very curious about it though as I've heard and read a lot of great things, and them using the base set art definitely helps with the nostalgia Yeah, think you're right. I might pick up Silver too, as before SoulSilver it was the Pokémon game I always tried my hardest to get but could never find after the Legend of Raikou special got me into Johto in a massive way. Heck, I even picked up a GBA cart in a market in the Philippines when I was much younger with a bunch of ROMs on (too young to know what was going on with it to be honest!) which was advertised as having Silver and, well, it didn't, it was a 120-in-1 cart though it did give me a pretty effective crash course in NES games...not that I could beat any of them, mind you! I also got a fake copy of LeafGreen from the same place. Fun to figure that out for the first time when attempting to transfer the Pokémon to Diamond through Pal Park and having it corrupt the ROM save... So yeah, probably get Crystal to play and Silver just to put my younger self at ease

Yeah, that pretty much how I came out of it the first time very powerful and unforgettable film, I'm honestly surprised that it and the story it's based on haven't inspired more outside of film. Wouldn't recommend The Conversation next because it hits a bit too close these days in the information age and just feels uncomfortable to watch at times, but if you haven't watched them before, The Godfather and Part II are two of my favourite films of all time and I can't recommend them enough. I dragged my friends out to see the first film in cinemas in February as part of the 50th anniversary celebration and they were surprised how much they ended up loving it (I wasn't, it's not a rare opinion that these films are fantastic ) Part III on the other hand... I mean it's fine. It's just not the other two

But the 3D makes it look so much prettier (and yes that is basically the only reason it's on there )

While I'm not in any real rush to pick everything up before the May deadline - my Wii U not letting me add my card means I'm fine using eShop cards and taking my time to get things by August - today I've started to have a look through the 3DS and Wii U digital libraries to start compiling my list, and hoo boy...my wallet hurts just thinking about it I started by looking through Virtual Console games, which I've finished looking through for the 3DS, and am currently sorting through the SNES library for on Wii U; I've been using the List of Virtual Console Games for 3DS (PAL) and List of Virtual Console Games for Wii U (PAL), for those curious, to spot overlaps and get a bigger picture of what I'm looking at here. The way I'm handling it for NES and SNES is that, because I know I'm more likely to want to play those on TV rather than in handheld, any games that overlap (and that I want) are getting added to my list of Wii U games, though there have been a few where I know they have 3D Classic versions (only looked at Nintendo ones so far, but I know there are some SEGA ones too)and so I'm not 100% sure on if I'll grab both or just get the 3D Classic version. A number of these are on the Nintendo Switch Online service...but I'd rather buy the game (knowing my habits it will also just make me infinitely more likely to check them out). In any case, I'm tracking all of this in an Excel file with game titles, eShop prices, sizes (including a conversion from blocks to Mb for 3DS titles), and I'm also prioritising the games between three tiers: 1 - Buy without hesitation, 2 - Buy with hesitation, and 3 - Sitting on the fence in hesitation (any games I have no interest in I'm just deleting from the list). Tiers 1 and 2 I'm pretty sure I'll pick up, but picking up tier 3 games largely depends on just how much my total outlay potentially comes to, which I'm sure will be fun to arrive at once I finish this exercise. I've found myself referring to Nintendo Life a whole lot as I think they've reviewed most (if not all?) of the Virtual Console releases across both platforms, which has made it very easy for me to get a quick idea on if a game would be for me or not just from brief gameplay, screenshots, their general score (most things below a 5/10 aren't getting a second glance ) and flicking through their review. So far then... Don't think I'll be picking up Pokémon Silver, Gold, and Crystal - but still trying to figure out what I want to do there. I'm also trying to keep an eye on the total number of games because I know the 3DS and Wii U both have a max. number of applications (which I'm not aiming to get anywhere near!), and I also need to keep in mind that I'll likely need to expand the storage of both (which is why I'm tracking game sizes). Add to all of this the fact that going through this is making me consider picking up a replacement New 3DS XL (my current one is a fingerprint magnet and a special design, so I'd like to retire it) and yeah, this is going to be an interesting next few months think I'll try to have a finalised list of games nailed within the next few weeks!

Bit of an update on the messy situation with PS+ stacking being blocked and the conversion rate to the new tiers:

Naoki Yoshida was featured in Uniqlo's magazine this month to coincide with the announcement of the 35th Anniversary t-shirts, and gave a small but important update on Final Fantasy XVI: it's in the final stage of development! 2022 may well be back on the menu

Looks like Worms World Party and Worms Armageddon have also been listed now. Don't worry guys, at 340 games to get through with 5 games a day we should have a full list around the start of July

No, it's not; and yes, you do! caps off what l think is arguably one of the strongest decades in an individual director's filmography (Coppola also directed The Godfather, The Godfather Part II and The Conversation in the 70's). If you do get around to watching it I'd also recommend checking out Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, as it does a great job of showing just how much of a challenge it was to film.

H-o-T, you've just helped me solve one of my longest standing gaming mysteries. I had to look up Silent Bomber as I swear I'd heard of it somewhere before, and well, I looked it up, and I've never seen that game before in my life. I then had to look up Heart of Darkness out of sheer curiosity about whether or not it connected to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (adapted in film into Apocalypse Now and also a clear inspiration in games for Spec Ops: The Line), because that would be a crazy thing to try to adapt to begin with, let alone on PS1. And well, it didn't according to its Wikipedia page. But then I saw its cover: When I was young, every weekend or two I'd go over to my cousins' while my parents got on with being adults, and we'd normally end up watching films or playing games. In the dead of summer one year, she let me borrow a game which definitely seemed a bit on the creepy side for my age, and I couldn't have been more than 5 years old looking back, as I didn't have my PS2 at the time. Now, the drive from my house to theirs was probably only 5 minutes at a real push on empty roads, but there must have been construction going on, because I was in the back of the car in a traffic jam after being given the game and waving goodbye for what felt like hours (so, in earnest, was probably no more than 20 minutes). The cars were barely rolling along, and so I did what every kid does with a new game and given the time: I looked at the back and front of this game's box over, and over, and over again. It might have been missing it's manual, as I don't seem to recall flicking through one. I don't know what it was - maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the slow roll, maybe it was me constantly reading the back and flipping the game to its front, or maybe even a combination of the three - but I felt absolutely awful after a short while: I'd somehow managed to get myself motion sick in a car which was barely moving, and it's my first memory of ever getting motion sickness. Heck, I feel nauseous just thinking about it Since I "more seriously" got into gaming, I kind of just assumed it was Abe's Oddysee for whatever reason, I think I might have just got the two mixed up in my head somehow, but I'd always sworn the game had a red background to its case, a dog, and some dumb kid on the front. The only real confirmation I needed though was looking up the rear cover: Yeah, there's no forgetting that I looked up the rest and the only one other one I seem to recall - I'm leaning towards having owned it? - was Devil Dice. Okay for this one I remember absolutely nothing about this game other than the weirdly covered die Man, talk about repressed memories, now I'm stuck trying to think of some more of the lesser known PS1 games I haven't thought about in a long time! That's actually why I mentioned Destruction Derby @Dcubed, had no idea it was already up anywhere - hopefully it comes to the service! - but I had a lot of dumb fun with friends sitting on the living room floor playing that game.

Damn you're right, I hadn't even thought about that. I think Forza typically has a 5 year deal (or something around that length) for licensing on cars before they're out, doubt it's much different for GT. Not to mention some of the music too Sooooooooo...Destruction Derby when?

Obligatory: Interesting that this time we're getting third party games popping up after the first party stuff the last time some games popped up, hopefully means we might not need to wait all the way until their official word for some of the potentially more exciting titles? Hopefully Ridge Racer turning up doesn't negate the possibility that we're going to see the old Gran Turismo games on here, as I'd definitely be in the mood for them - especially if there were trophies - after I finish with 7. We're three and a half weeks away or so from the service launching in Asia, so I'm curious to see when and how they show this off and open the floodgates. I think a 15 minute State of Play on the service, showing the UI, confirming the games for launch, showing some footage to help us confirm the quality of emulation/streaming, etc., would probably be the most you need to do. I'm just hoping it's not another PlayStation Blog update...maybe we see something the week after next?

Not-E3 begins the usual week of E3: Xbox have confirmed their Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase will take place on Sunday 12th June 2022 at 18:00 BST... Right then, time to see how Starfield is turning out and if it's on schedule for me to make the silly decision of picking up a Series X for that and the few legacy titles on Xbox I want to play. And Forza. Think they're the first to do confirm a date and time? So now we just wait to see who joins them

Avatar is such an interesting property to me because despite holding a stupid amount of box office records for so long and needing a franchise like the MCU to spend 10+ years building up to surpassing it, it really did never permeate pop culture. I've seen a smattering of pictures online of people who cosplayed as Na'vi in the years immediately following the film's release, but beyond that, I feel like it's referenced more when talking about James Cameron, qualifying which Avatar you're talking about ("Avatar – the kid with the blue arrow tattoos, not the blue people", or "Avatar – the great one"), and gets a few nods in "nerd culture" shows like The Big Bang Theory, but it never crossed that threshold really. I feel like there are a lot of reasons for this, mainly James Cameron being the creative and likely having so much power over the intricate details of the property. It's had minimal supplementary material at best, no presence on toy shelves, and he's been given over a decade to put out a sequel (and produce multiple films at once) because he wanted to put them out. Only other comparison I can really think of with a creative in film taking their time to going back around to something is George Lucas and the gap between the original trilogy and prequels. But I'm there with you. I think the film is fine, it's not great, and based on the first film alone I don't think it deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as something like Star Wars, other than from the perspective of its visuals, sound design, and its impact on the industry and how higher-ups looked at 3D and the box office specifically (it singlehandedly revived 3D and it will do it again this December after it has waned in recent years). I just think it lacks any meaningful depth. Personally - and yes, I'm saying this as a huge Star Wars fan which throws together loads of things like Hidden Fortress, Dune, Flash Gordon, etc. - I also just think the film lacks any ambition in its storytelling and writing. I hate to say things have been "ripped off", or at least try not to say it so flippantly...but from a story perspective, Avatar is a weird concoction of many elements of much better films, like Princess Mononoke, Dances with Wolves, and Pocahontas. I think this film could have some interesting stuff going for it, though, first off being that it's got it's awkward first film out of the way which did a lot of heavy lifting in terms of world building, and I kind of think anything from now on should just be an improvement in quality. Long form storytelling and intricate world building has exploded in TV and film over the last 10 years, so if Jim put as much time into the next few films as he did the first, I think it's going to get a hell of a lot more appreciation. This. I'm in this for the IMAX. I actually didn't get to see the film in cinemas ( because that was a rare occurrence for me growing up anyways); fell asleep watching it on DVD as a kid (you know, for a blockbuster, looking back that really should have been a sign that it wasn't going to permeate the mainstream if it sent some of its target demographic to sleep, but the length of the film didn't help!); but I did get to watch it on blu-ray - and 3D blu-ray at that, the only one I've ever bought because I knew if anyone is putting the time into that crap it'll be James Cameron - and the film remains a spectacle to this day. The quality of the CGI in the first film is still of the absolute highest quality and it is consistent all of the way through the film, which I can't say is frequently the case for Star Wars or the MCU. You can really tell they let it cook in those servers I cheekily think it should get a nomination for Best Animated Picture rather than Best Picture if it ends up in the running, though