August 2022

Two new fighters are coming to Marvel Contest of Champions: Quicksilver, the speedster brother of the Scarlet Witch and Galan, the humble farmer of the planetary nursery, previously known as the great devourer Galactus.

Galan releases on August 11. He can gather planetary mass by gaining buffs. After gathering over 200, a heavy attack will activate The Harvest, dealing massive damage to enemy fights. Chosen by fans to be added to the game this year, Quicksilver releases on August 25. His speed lets him almost effortlessly dodge enemy attacks and stack debuffs on them while he does so. He also gains momentum by dodging enemy attacks and landing basic hits. Momentum unlocks abilities the higher it goes, culminating a state called terminal velocity.

Marvel Contest of Champions is also introducing new story content associated with the fighters. The summoner (the game's player insert figure) investigates the lost Cosmic Seed, a powerful Asgardian artifact capable of creating a Worldtree. In their search, they find Quicksilver battling The Silver Surfer, and start on the path of discovering who stole the Cosmic Seed from Asgard.

In an additional promotion, to celebrate the upcoming release of the She-Hulk TV series, players who download and log into Contest of Champions will receive She-Hulk for free, starting August 17 and ending September 28.

The Apple TV and Apple TV 4K are arguably the best streaming devices around. Like Roku and Fire TV Sticks, the Apple TV provides an easy interface to access streaming services such as Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Prime Video, and more. Where the Apple TV truly excels is performance for both audio and video. The Apple TV bests a lot of smart TVs and the more budget-friendly Roku and Amazon Fire Devices. That said, the Apple TV is worth it if you stream a lot of content, and Apple is offering an awesome deal on both Apple TV models. From now until August 15, you'll get a free $50 Apple Gift Card when purchasing the Apple TV or Apple TV 4K.

If you do spring for the Apple TV 4K, you’ll be treated to more than just 4K. The tiny device is also equipped with an A12 Bionic chip to improve gaming through Apple Arcade, it offers full support for HDR, and is compatible with Dolby Atmos. So if you’re not happy with your current smart TVs performance, consider making the upgrade to Apple TV 4K--and snagging a $50 gift card in the process.

Riot Games has announced that Project L--the upcoming 2v2 fighting game starring champions from the League of Legends universe--will be free to play when it launches next year, joining LoL, Legends of Runeterra, and Teamfight Tactics in Riot's free-to-play portfolio.

The announcement came via a two-minute video hosted by Tom Cannon, senior director and executive producer on the game. In the video, Cannon says the decision to go free-to-play was part of a focus to "remove as many barriers of entry as possible," including "where you live, what your skill level is, or how much money you have to spend on a game."

The video also announces the next character for the roster: Illaoi, the Truth Bearer for the god Nagakabouros. A developer blog was released alongside the video showcasing the thought process behind Illaoi's adaptation into the fighting game, including how she moves, what attacks she will use, and what kind of fighter she will be.

Nintendo Switch Online has improved tremendously over the past few years, now offering a bunch of classic NES and SNES games alongside access to online multiplayer.

Evo 2022--the largest fighting game tournament of the year and the first live Evo under PlayStation's ownership--is slated to begin August 5, and PlayStation is celebrating with Evo Lounge, a brand-new show focusing on all the action throughout the weekend.

Evo Lounge will air August 5 and 6 live from the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas where Evo 2022 is being held. According to the official PlayStation Blog announcement, the stream will include "curated show coverage, bracket updates, interviews with players, and exciting content and reveals from developers and publishers."

The blog post also promises updates from the tournaments, sneak peeks on what's coming next for fighting games, and more. Publishers confirmed to be part of Evo Lounge include:

Codemasters is famous the world over for developing high-quality simulation racing games.

Last month, the UK-based developer was in pole position in the charts with its latest smash hit: F1 22. However, the company continues to invest in other racing experiences, and today we turn our attention to another part of the Codemasters business: rally games.

We sit down with Ross Gowing, the senior creative director on the EA Sports Rally team, to discuss life at Codemasters and the future of off-road racing.

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Steam has updated its guidelines regarding graphical assets on the store, with the goal to make them "as clear and straightforward as possible for customers."

In a blog post detailing the new rules, Valve explained that going forward banner images should be restricted to "game artwork, the game name, and any official subtitle" and should not feature:

This applies to any store graphical assets which Steam said "are the banner images (called ‘Capsules’ in Steamworks) that represent your game throughout the store.”

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Valve and ID@Xbox are the first major companies who will deliver talks at GI Live: London in September.

Valve will be streaming in from Seattle to answer indie dev questions live at the show, while Xbox will be talking about its ID programme on stage.

The talks will take place over the event's two physical days on Wednesday, September 21st and Thursday, September 22nd. A digital-only meeting day will also take place on Tuesday, September 20th.

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Our Machinery has pulled the plug on its game engine just over a year after it launched.

The company emailed developers to let them know development on its toolset, called The Machinery, has ceased and is even asking them to delete any copies they have installed.

In a message shared with GamesIndustry.biz, the company wrote:

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The June launch of Diablo Immortal was not enough to pull Activision Blizzard out of its recent malaise, as the publisher posted its second quarter results today, showing double-digit declines to revenues, net income, and players.

Revenue: $1.64 billion (down 28% year-on-year) Bookings: $1.64 billion (down 15%) Net income: $280 million (down 68%) Monthly active users: 361 million (down 12% year-over-year and 3% quarter-over-quarter)

The Activision division continued to show declines with revenues down 38% year-over-year to $490 million, and engagement continuing to slide.

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It can be difficult keeping track of the various comings and goings in the games industry, which is why we compile them in semi-regular round-ups.

If you have new appointments or transitions in your company that belong here, please send the names of the appointees, new role and company, and prior role and company to newhires@gamesindustry.biz.

Video game retailer Kinguin announced that games industry veteran David Yarnton has been hired as partner and chief of business development.

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A new report reveals that Sony believes that Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard may influence future console purchases.

As reported by VGC, the platform holder responded to questions about the acquisition from the Brazilian government alongside other gaming and tech firms.

"[Call of Duty] is synonymous with first-person shooter games and essentially defines that category," it said to regulators.

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Google AdMob's app publishers can now access Pangle's exclusive TikTok for Business ad demand.

Pangle, the ad network of TikTok for Business, has joined Google AdMob as a bidding partner, which means mobile app developers and publishers can boost their revenue with exclusive ad demand from TikTok for Business advertisers. Google AdMob is Pangle's newest mediation partner, and joins the likes of MAX, ironSource, DT FairBid, Appodeal, AdMost, Nimbus, TradPlus, and TopOn.

Following a successful beta, the product integration is available to all app publishers from today. Mobile publishers and developers that integrate Pangle with Google AdMob will be able to display ads in various non-intrusive formats, including banner ads, interstitial ads, and rewarded video ads that give app users a choice to watch advertising content in return for in-app incentives.

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Despite being an accomplished programmer with credits at renowned studios like Insomniac Games and Media Molecule, Moo Yu feels like he’s still finding his feet.

Yu is something of a veteran in the games industry, having started his game development career in Southern California, before relocating to the UK and working on a multitude of mobile and indie projects including the crowdfunded Knights and Bikes.

But his current position – creative director at his own studio, Team Artichoke, working on an unannounced game -- he took up with reluctance.

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The movie rights for Tomb Raider are currently up for grabs, after MGM failed to greenlight a sequel.

TheWrap reports that the Hollywood giant had until May 2022 to approve a new Tomb Raider film, but its failure to do so means it has lost the rights to the IP.

Multiple anonymous sources have told the site there are several movie studios now bidding for the property.

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How much employees are being paid is something that is generally shrouded in mystery.

Much of the time staff are discouraged from discussing their compensation, which – among other things – often hides pay disparity based on gender and race.

As a result, there have been calls for greater transparency when it comes to pay. Not everyone is on board with this, but one company which can clearly see which way the wind is blowing is German mobile games firm InnoGames, which published the salary bands for a number of its departments last month.

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PlayStation hopes that its recently expanded subscription service and getting more PS5 units into the market will counter the decline in player engagement it’s experiencing this year.

During its latest earnings call, transcribed by Seeking Alpha, Sony’s executive deputy president and chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki said total gameplay time among PlayStation users was down 15% year-on-year in the three months ended June 30, 2022.

June was reported as a stronger month, up 3% over May but still down 10% when compared to June 2021.

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Four months after leaving Ubisoft, David Polfeldt has resurfaced at PlayerUnknown Productions.

The former Massive MD joins as senior advisor, with founder Brendan 'PlayerUnknown' Greene saying he felt Polfeldt "would be a great fit to come and advise [him] on creating a successful studio culture," after meeting last month at a conference.

Polfeldt confirmed in a statement that he will "help guide Brendan's hand in creating an authentic studio and a successful brand."

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Cars on the Road is getting a Fury Road spoof

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The Flash's final season will air in 2023, wrapping up the Arrowverse's decade-plus reign on The CW

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Pick up some great survival games like Subnautica and Oxygen Not Included

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In a movie with a lot of meanings and messages, trauma and poor choices are a major thread

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Follow us @polygon for video game opinion pieces, news, and memes!

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Kings Canyon is 'reforged' in the new season, entitled 'Hunted'

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It also might be the funniest physical-comedy game ever

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A whole frontier with no one to say howdy to

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With only a month or so to go until the anime spin-off of Cyberpunk 2077 hits screens, Netflix and CD Projekt have fired out a full trailer for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. It has a little more background for the main characters, and introduces their cyborg posse. Watch the very edgy trailer below.

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A recent update for Hitman 3 added the tropical Ambrose Island map to the game. This map has a piratical theme, and so it is only fitting that Guybrush Threepwood from the Monkey Island series makes a showing on its shores.

Please note that there will be some spoilers for Hitman 3's Ambrose Island map below.

If you venture down from the Western Beach on Ambrose Island, you will come across a small nook in the coastline. Here, there is a gravestone set into the side of the cliff face.

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I spent five minutes with MultiVersus over the weekend, which turned into ten minutes and then an hour and then the best part of a morning. MultiVersus is great! If you aren't aware of it, it's a Warner Bros-themed Smash Bros-alike. You choose from a bunch of familiar characters, and then fight on 2D stages. Your aim is to get ring-outs by lobbing enemies off the screen, and the more damage you do, the further they fly when you hit them. Best of four wins. Simple.

Not simple, obviously, and here's where an admission comes in. I love the idea of Smash Bros - and I particularly adore the way that the games have become sort of Nintendo museums, beautiful virtual dioramas in their own right. But I am thick and slow and these games have always looked fast and complicated. All of these Nintendo characters, some of which I am happy to admit I have not really heard of, fighting it out in astonishingly swift battles.

I think there are two reasons MultiVersus clicked. Three actually, the bonus third being that I was playing alongside my daughter, whose enthusiasm for these things always carries me aloft with it. Anyway, the other two reasons: One, MultiVersus is new, so there's that sense of getting in on the ground floor. Even if people are turning up with Smash Bros experience - and they are, and it's helping them - the psychological toll is lightened, because this is a game that's been around for a few weeks at most.

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PlayerUnknown Productions has announced it has hired David Polfeldt as a senior advisor.

Polfeldt was managing director of Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment for 12 years. He left the company earlier this year in March, as he felt that he wasn't "the right manager for what the studio has become".

During his tenure at Massive Entertainment, Polfeldt worked on many of its leading titles and was part of the teams in charge of the delayed Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and a mysterious open-world Star Wars project.

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Call of Duty fans are switching off from the franchise, Activision's latest user figures suggest.

Monthly active user data published by Activision shows player numbers have dipped over the past 12 months - from 127 million in June 2021 to just 94 million this year.

The details are part of a tough round of financial results for Activision Blizzard this quarter, despite the recent and highly-profitable launch of Diablo Immortal.

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Sega's Mega Drive Mini 2 console will only have a tenth of the supply compared to the previous retro console in North America.

What's more, Western customers will need to purchase the console through Amazon Japan's storefront due to the ongoing semiconductor shortage, reports Polygon.

The console was originally intended as a Japan-only product, but "by using Amazon's 'Japan Store' system, we found that at least a small number of units could be sold via Amazon.com, so a portion was allocated to make the North American version," says a Sega representative.

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Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered on Steam has been re-priced in a number of territories.

Specifically, this is affecting those who pre-purchased the game in the UK, as well as Australia, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, and Switzerland.

The new price is £49.99, down from £54.99. Customers will now need to cancel their pre-purchase of the game to receive a full refund and then pre-purchase the game again at the new price.

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Discotek Media announced a host of new classic anime Blu-ray releases. Chief among them is a Blu-ray release of the TV anime series Urusei Yatsura with English subtitles. Discotek Media expects to release Urusei Yatsura sometime in 2023. The release will not come with any extras or additional content.

Urusei Yatsura, aka Lum or Those Obnoxious Aliens, is an anime adaptation of the manga series with the same name. It follows the protagonist Ataru and the alien princess Lum, who mistakenly believes Ataru to be her new husband. Rumiko Takahashi, the creator of Inuyasha and Ranma 1/2, originally wrote the story in 1977. Weekly Shonen Sunday later serialized the manga in 1978, and an anime adaptation soon followed in 1981.

The new Blu-ray release will include all 195 episodes of the anime. This release will include Japanese audio with English subtitles. Notably, these subtitles are based on the original AnimEigo subtitle scripts. AnimEigo originally licensed the television series and its various films before its license expired. Discotek Media noted that AnimEigo founder Robert Woodhead helped write custom software for the company to use in translating his proprietary subtitle format.

https://twitter.com/discotekmedia/status/1553561706671923200?s=20&t=k4fQ6sHDTgf5BH7iJiun5Q

Other Discotek Media announcements included the following upcoming releases:

The last few episodes of Better Call Saul are starting to seriously ramp up as we catapult to the series’ conclusion. And if you’re wondering exactly what Gene and Kim talked about on the phone in the episode titled “Breaking Bad”, here’s what you need to know.

Do be warned that this article contains spoilers for the episode “Waterworks”.

Gene and Kim’s Phone Conversation in Better Call Saul

Near the start of the episode, we see Gene call up Kim after he learns that she asked Francesca about him. In Breaking Bad, we don’t get to hear the conversation and only see Gene getting increasingly agitated. However, in the next episode Waterworks, we finally get to hear the full conversation from Kim’s perspective.

At this point in the series, it’s been about six years since the big breakup, and Kim has since moved to Florida to start a new life for herself. After Heisenberg is unmasked and Saul is forced to go into hiding, he calls up Francesca a few weeks after to get a sense of what the situation is like. Francesca then tells him that Kim called her up to see how she was doing, and to ask if Jimmy is still alive.

This information likely gives Gene a bit of hope, prompting him to act on impulse a little and call her up. He tries to make conversation and suggests that they should catch up, but Kim is shaken from hearing from him, and finally says that he should turn himself in. Gene is upset and starts dredging up their past, mentioning that Gus, Mike, and Lalo are all dead, and says that maybe she should turn herself in since she feels so guilty.

Kim eventually says she’s glad he’s alive, and hangs up on him.

The Star Wars universe is vast and epic, but with the series’ forty-plus-year focus on the nine-film Skywalker Saga, it’s only now that it feels like that galaxy far, far away is beginning to really stretch its creative muscle.

Indeed, not only is Disney in the process of fleshing out the narratives of peripheral characters like Boba Fett and The Mandalorian, but it’s also adding some welcome detail and nuance to beloved core Jedi like Obi-Wan Kenobi. Beyond that, the slate is bursting at the seams with promising TV and movie projects. In short: whether you like it or not, the Star Wars floodgates have truly been opened.

One faction that often gets the short end of the Lightsaber are the pesky Imperial Stormtroopers. For a start, their shooting capabilities are an absolute joke – to the point where a duo of Stormtroopers in The Mandalorian actually broke the fourth wall by cracking some self-deprecating gags about how poor their aim is.

In addition, it’s fair to say that Finn’s Stormtrooper-turned-good sub-plot was a bit of washout in the latest sequel trilogy. Really, Disney could’ve done a lot more with the concept, but I guess with hindsight everything is much clearer, right?

Herschel "Guy" Beahm IV, known by most as Dr. Disrespect, helped form a "AAA game studio" with former Call of Duty and Halo developers in December of last year. Dubbed Midnight Society, the studio's first project was slated to be a multiplayer shooter. More details about it have been released, including word that it's a PvPvE extraction shooter. 

Now, Midnight Society's first game has a name – Deadrop – and gameplay footage. This gameplay comes from players who had (very) early access to the title, so it's less of a demo or vertical slice of gameplay and more of a proof of concept. Check it out for yourself in the tweets below from Okami Games. 

Here's another gameplay clip in a different firing range. #DEADROP pic.twitter.com/odT5QHYtFp

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown players can now decorate their aircraft with character emblems from The Idolmaster series. Bandai Namco newly added the emblems through the free 3rd Anniversary Update patch released on August 2, 2022. It featured 13 characters that appeared in The Idolmaster: Starlit Season, the series' latest console entry available on PS4 and PC in Asia.

The new update also added more aircraft skins. Some of them are modeled after squadrons in prior Ace Combat entries, such as the UPEO from Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere and the Wardog and Razgriz squadrons from Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War. It also added a new glitch-inspired Shining skin for the fictional aircraft XFA-27.

[tnm_video layout="mnmd-post-media"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfBPqIKMsWA[/tnm_video]

The new crossover content added another entry to the long-running collaboration between the two original game IPs owned by Namco. The crossover began in earnest when Bandai Namco added The Idolmaster DLC liveries in the 2007 Xbox 360 game, Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation. Most Ace Combat games released afterwards also received post-release content featuring characters from the idol-raising simulation game series.

Studio Trigger, CD Projekt Red, and Netflix have announced the Japanese voice cast list for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. The anime show will feature prominent voice actresses like Aoi Yuuki and Tomoyo Kurosawa, and veteran voice actors such as Kazuhiko Inoue and Kenjiro Tsuda. KENN will become the show's main performer as he voices the protagonist David. [Thanks, doope!]

Here is the list of Japanese voice actors who provide their voices to the key characters in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.

• David: KENN
• Lucy: Aoi Yuuki
• Maine: Hiroki Touchi
• Dorio: Michiko Kaiden
• Kiwi: Takako Honda
• Pilar: Wataru Takagi
• Rebecca: Tomoyo Kurosawa
• Faraday: Kazuhiko Inoue
• Gloria: Yurika Hino
• Ripperdoc: Kenjiro Tsuda

CD Projekt Red has also uploaded a new official trailer for Edgerunners on its Cyberpunk 2077 YouTube channel. It features Japanese voiceovers performed by the above voice actors. The video also contains subtitles in nine languages, including English.

[tnm_video layout="mnmd-post-media"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiR_lMNlJko[/tnm_video]