Koji Igarashi's recently-released Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night has caught the ire of the internet yet again. Following a bug that caused progression issues on other platforms, some Nintendo Switch players are running into performance problems, reporting large dips in frame rate and unstable gameplay. Publisher 505 Games has announced plans to address these issues.Bloodstained Kickstarter backers received an email from 505 Games' senior community manager Jason Ryan. Ryan said the team has heard the feedback and ultimately wants everyone "to be able to enjoy the game and have it run smoothly." To that end, Ryan said resources will be shifted "immediately" to focus on Switch performance and stability."Update 1.01 was published to Switch prior to launch to add content and improve performance," Ryan wrote. "It did not accomplish as much as we had hoped and we need to do more. You can expect a number of small updates that will improve different areas of the game rather than waiting longer for one big update. We will have more details as we dive into the work."Ryan didn't specify what kind of work the team is doing, nor did he clarify when these "small updates" will release for Bloodstained on Switch. You can check out a side-by-side comparison between the PS4 and Switch versions below.In other Bloodstained news, the game will add multiplayer in a post-launch patch at some unspecified time.Off the heels of E3 2019, Bloodstained released to very little fanfare. The launch trailer gave an unexpected announcement in the form of a Shovel Knight cameo. Bloodstained is currently on sale for PC if you're looking for a cheap way to pick up the title.Info from Gamespot.com

The second major update for World of Warcraft's Battle for Azeroth expansion has arrived. Rise of Azshara is now live, and it introduces a wealth of new content and features to the long-running MMO, including new locations, Heritage armor, a mount equipment system, and much more.Among the biggest additions to the game are two new zones to explore. The first is Nazjatar, the capital city of the naga and the home of the eponymous Azshara, who serves as the final foe in a new eight-boss raid called Azshara's Eternal Palace. The second new zone is the city of Mechagon. Here you'll be able to take on a new Mythic-difficulty dungeon called Operation Mechagon, which culminates with a battle against the city's mad king.Rise of Azshara also introduces a new type equipment known as Benthic gear, which will help you during your exploits in Nazjatar. As you explore the naga capital, you'll acquire a new kind of soulbound currency called Prismatic Manapearls. These can be traded for a piece of Benthic gear, which can be further upgraded all the way to to ilvl 425. On top of that, Gnomes and Taurens can now embark on special quests to earn their own Heritage armor.Another significant change the update brings is a new mount equipment system. This gives you the ability to customize any mount with abilities; for instance, you can now outfit any mount with the ability to walk on water. There are also new Pathfinder achievements to complete; clearing these will allow your mount to fly through Kul Tiras, Zandalar, Mechagon, and Nazjatar.Beyond that, the Heart of Azeroth system features a new customization option, Essences, which can give your character a variety of different buffs and other abilities. There's also a new pet battle dungeon named Stratholme and a variety of other changes. You can read more details about the Rise of Azshara update on the official World of Warcraft website.This year marks the 15th anniversary of World of Warcraft's launch, and to commemorate the milestone, Blizzard is releasing a 15th Anniversary Edition of the game that comes with a variety of physical and in-game goodies. World of Warcraft Classic is also coming this summer; here's how Blizzard aims to make the world of Azeroth feel dangerous again.Info from Gamespot.com

Each week in Destiny 2's Season of Opulence, Werner 99-40, one of the Tower robots hacked by Cabal Emperor Calus, gives you four bounties that can help you completely upgrade your Chalice of Opulence. Those bounties have the usual requirements--get a certain number of kills, for instance, or complete a certain type of activity. But completing that step of each bounty only earns you a Treasure Map, and it's up to you to follow it to find the Runes, Imperials, and legendary drops the bounties promise.While the bounties themselves are often a bit time-consuming to complete, the glowing treasure chests they drop are also usually a bit tough to find. Calus loves to leave them in out-of-the-way places that aren't always immediately obvious. Luckily, we've tracked down each of Calus's treasures to show you exactly where to go to snag them.The Salvaged Goods bounty requires you to pick up five Legendary engrams from drops in any activity, which means if you just play the game as normal, you'll eventually complete this bounty without any extra effort. Clearing it earns you the map, which sends you to Io.Where To Find The TreasureOn Io, you're looking for the Spine Burrows area. It looks like the location you want is near Giant's Scar, but in fact, it's accessible from Lost Oasis. Pick the Lost Oasis landing zone, then hop on your sparrow and head due east toward the edge of the area (toward where "Spine Burrows" is marked on the map). When you arrive, you should see a cave opening with a stream of blue water leading into it--that's where you're headed.Follow the cave tunnel until you hit a large room filled with Taken. The Spine Burrows name should come up on your screen to let you know you're in the right place. The chest you want is on the ground on your right; hop across to the small ledge in front of you on your right side and follow the tunnel through.You'll exit next to a big tree. Drop down to the ground below and do a 180 and you should find the chest right behind you.Info from Gamespot.com

The Season of Opulence in Destiny 2 encourages you to get greedy as you fight through the Menagerie. The season also provides new weekly bounties that send you all over the solar system doing jobs for Calus, the Cabal emperor, in order to earn Imperials that can be used to upgrade the Chalice of Opulence. All of those bounties have a second component, though: In addition to racking up kills or gathering items, you also need to track down hidden treasures in order to claim your prizes.The treasure for the Gaze Into Death's Eyes bounty takes you to Mars. The bounty itself encourages you to get in the face of your enemies, racking up 200 close-range kills with shotguns, SMGs, sidearms, or swords. Once you've done that, you'll unlock a Treasure Map directing you to Alton Dynamo on Mars.Where To Find The TreasureStart at the Braytech Futurescape landing zone on Mars, then hop on your sparrow and head west toward Alton's Dynamo. You'll power through Dynamo Approach and into the facility by passing through the cave tunnel. Fight through the Cabal you find there until you go through a door and enter a hallway. You'll find two paths ahead: one to the left and one to the right.Take the right hallway and you'll enter a big server room. Like most of the facility, this room is laid out in the shape of a big diamond, and you're going to want to go toward the back wall to your left, around the back of the raised central platform. Watch out for Hive enemies as you head toward the back of the room.When you find the stairs on the left side of the platform, keep going past them around the side to find the glowing chest nearby.Info from Gamespot.com

It's official: The Office is leaving Netflix, but it's not happening very soon. NBC announced today that it picked up the "exclusive" streaming rights to The Office for the United States, and that all nine seasons of the show will be available on NBC's own streaming service beginning in 2021. The show will remain on Netflix until January 2021.NBC's streaming service will have ads, which is a fact that Netflix pointed out in a tweet responding to the news.We're sad that NBC has decided to take The Office back for its own streaming platform — but members can binge watch the show to their hearts' content ad-free on Netflix until January 2021 — Netflix US (@netflix) June 25, 2019According to NBC, The Office is the most popular show in all of streaming on-demand video. The show tallied an astounding 52 billion minutes of viewing time in 2018, according to NBC. And in April this year, it was watched for nearly double the amount of time as the most-viewed show on streaming video on-demand, though it's unclear how NBC calculated that given it presumably doesn't have access to streaming data for competing shows.Whatever the case, The Office is wildly popular on Netflix in America. According to Brian Baumgartner, who plays Kevin Malone, it is Netflix's most popular show "by far."NBC's untitled streaming service is scheduled to launch in 2020 featuring a library that contains "some of the world's most popular television and film franchises," as well as brand-new shows and programs from other networks. Before this announcement, one other possibility was for Netflix to pay NBC Universal to retain The Office. This likely would have cost Netflix a small fortune, as the streaming network reportedly paid $100 million to keep Friends on Netflix through 2019. Friends is believed to be Netflix's No. 2 most popular show, so The Office presumably would have cost more to keep.According to The Hollywood Reporter, NBC is paying $100 million per year for five years to producers Universal Television to have The Office on the NBC streaming service. Universal Television and NBC are owned by the same company.Also of note here is that NBC's deal is for The Office's domestic streaming rights, so it remains to be seen how this contract will affect streaming availability in other parts of the world. For example, The Office is available on the streaming platform Stan in Australia, not Netflix. The show is relatively new to Australia as well, having only just arrived on Stan in 2018.In other news, a new version of The Office is reportedly in development, though whether or not it's being made for TV or streaming remains to be seen. Info from Gamespot.com

One of Microsoft's next big exclusive, Gears 5, launches in September for Xbox One and PC, and its release date is just ahead of the release of Project Scarlett in Holiday 2020. Gears 5 will presumably play on Scarlett given the console supports all Xbox One games, but developer The Coalition isn't ready to talk about its plans yet.The Coalition boss Rod Fergusson told IGN that he and the team are "really focused" on launching Gears 5 on the existing Xbox consoles. Given that The Coalition is owned by Microsoft, you can connect the dots and imagine that Gears 5 will also support Scarlett, but Microsoft isn't ready to make any announcements yet."Really focused on Gears 5 right now on what we have now in terms of Xbox One X and One S and One Regular. The Xbox One family of devices [in ad sales guy voice]," he said. "That's what we're really focused on right now. I think there's stuff, as first-party, you could probably make some suppositions about what we would and not do but I think it's too early to talk about that now."In June during E3, Xbox boss Jason Ronald confirmed that "thousands" of games from all four generations of Xbox will be playable on Project Scarlett.In other news, another high-profile first-party Microsoft game, Halo Infinite, is releasing in Holiday 2020 as a launch title for Scarlett. That game will also play on all Xbox One models, as well as PC.Gears 5 launches on September 10, but those who buy the Ultimate Edition can play beginning September 6. Additionally, all Xbox Game Pass members get the game at no extra cost.Info from Gamespot.com

The latest mashup pack for Minecraft is out now, and it brings Toy Story to the popular sandbox game.The Toy Story Mash-Up pack adds a number of character skins from the Pixar franchise, including classics like Woody, Buzz, and Bo Peep, as well as new ones from Toy Story 4 such as Keanu Reeves' Duke Caboom and Ducky & Bunny.Some of the new locations in the Toy Story Mash-Up Pack include Andy's bright and colorful bedroom and Sid's spooky bedroom of horrors. Everything is scaled down to be seen from the perspective of a toy. That puts a new spin on Minecraft as you'll need to jump and climb around.The Toy Story Mash-Up Pack is available now on Xbox and PC for $8 USD. Click through the images in the gallery above to get a closer look at the new character skins.Toy Story is just the latest mega-franchise to come to Minecraft with a Mash-Up Pack. Some of the other notable ones include The Simpsons, Pirates of the Caribbean, Nightmare Before Christmas, and Solo: A Star Wars Story.Minecraft remains immensely popular, and Microsoft continues to expand the franchise with new extensions. While Minecraft 2 may not be happening, a new game called Minecraft Dungeons is on the way. Additionally, a Pokemon Go-style AR game called Minecraft Earth is in development as well.Info from Gamespot.com

United States presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has joined Twitch, becoming the second major presidential candidate in US history to do so.According to Vox, the Sanders Twitch channel might come to life on Thursday, timed with his appearance in the first round of the Democratic primary debates. The channel page is live right now, but there is no programming on it.Sanders' move into Twitch is reportedly part of the 77-year-old Vermont Senator's wider "Bernie TV" campaign, where he'll livestream to a variety of streaming services including Twitch, as well as Facbook and YouTube, where he already has a presence.The content will apparently include discussion on the news of the day, campaign updates, and pre- and post-debate programming."We're moving toward doing a lot more live content on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook, tapping into an audience where there's not a lot of political content already," Josh Miller-Lewis, the head of Sanders' digital campaign, told Vox.Another Democratic presidential hopeful, Andrew Yang, launched a Twitch channel in 2018.The first Democratic debates take place June 26 and June 27 in Miami, running from 9 to 11 PM ET. Sanders appears during night two. Info from Gamespot.com

In the fall of 1945, in the pages of the New Yorker, Edmund Wilson lambasted H.P. Lovecraft as a peddler of "hack-work" who was, in short, "not a good writer." His most cutting (and famous) remark has dogged the author's legacy since: "The only real horror in most of these fictions," Wilson quipped, "is the horror of bad taste and bad art." I was reminded of the quote as I played The Sinking City, a supernatural-horror mystery game inspired by Lovecraft's fiction. Faced with this game's crude visuals, monotonous storytelling, and graceless mechanics, I knew exactly how Wilson felt.The Sinking City is a pastiche of Lovecraft lore that draws heavily on the characters, settings, and themes of some of his most celebrated stories. The game especially draws from "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," about a young man's perilous visit to a mysterious port town on the coast of New England overrun by a race of fish-people. You are Charles Reed, a shell-shocked veteran turned sullen private investigator, newly arrived in the fictitious town of Oakmont, Massachusetts to learn more about the disturbing visions that have been troubling you since the war. The town, however, is beset by its own eerie problems, and naturally you are tasked, the moment you step foot in the place, to solve these and others as you look to uncover the truth.From the outset, the game presumes a lot of interest in Oakmont and the various political machinations of its inhabitants. You'll hear all about warring families, fraught racial tensions between factions of mutated denizens, long-vanished naval expeditions, unexplained natural disasters, plundered historical artifacts, arcane regional dialects, infestations of deadly critters from the sea, and a whole suite of murders, extortions, mutilations, and conspiracies--and that's all just in the first two missions. This information is conveyed in long, dull expository monologues and conversations that are entirely one-sided and feel endless. These interminable data-dumps are grueling to click through and are the primary means of proceeding through your investigations. The order in which you choose to ask questions is irrelevant, and there's nothing you can do to alter or vary these talks at all.Your missions are a series of convoluted, interconnected cases, a bit like LA Noire, in which evidence must be gathered, suspects must be "interrogated" (that is, listened to), and conclusions must be drawn. These moments are punctuated by rudimentary moral dilemmas, such as whether a perpetrator ought to face justice or be allowed to walk free in light of extenuating circumstances. The length of these missions is irritatingly protracted by how far apart relevant clues, characters, and other mandatory waypoints tend to be from one another, as well as by backtracking, repetitive searching, and an overall lack of clarity about where you need to go next and what you're meant to do there. Oakmont is an open world, and it is enormous--way too huge, plainly, for how little one section is differentiated from another and how little there is in it worth seeing.By contrast, there is a frankly huge number of game mechanics--so many that the tutorial is mapped to one of the controller keys. One of the game's more unwieldy features is the "Mind Palace," which takes the form of an ungainly submenu cluttered with information collected from clues retrieved and interviews conducted during a mission. You have to combine different pieces of information with related facts, which in my experience was achieved mainly by sticking them together at random until I found two that fit. By connecting the pieces successfully, you create inferences, which can then be connected to reach conclusions. It's simplistic, vague, and a poor approximation of the process of solving a real mystery.Some of this information must be unearthed from archives, which can be found in various places around town, such as the newspaper office and the hospital. Searching the archive for info about a particular event or incident involves selecting search criteria from among different categories, including the period of time, people involved, and location, based on your best guess of what might be relevant to the matter at hand. For example, if you want to learn about an expedition to discover the origin of an outbreak of mass hysteria, you can narrow your search to when the expedition took place and from which port the ship embarked. None of this info is visualized or actually browsable in any meaningful way, and the archives are as robust as a bill of fare. Like so much in this game, it seems designed to give you something to do, but it feels like busywork, with no clear purpose.Your hero has certain supernatural powers, and from time to time you must avail yourself of them in the course of an investigation. You can use "retrocognition" to witness a glimpse of the past--a blurry, blue-tinted silhouette of whatever event happens to be on your itinerary--and, if you can correctly guess the order of these past events chronologically, you'll find out some revelation about the case at hand. Another power works as a kind of Batman: Arkham-style Detective Mode, allowing you to see things that aren't visible to the naked eye; yet another allows you to accept guidance from ghostly figures, who will kindly point you in the right direction. None of these powers make for dynamic gameplay, and aesthetically they tend to be lumpy, lurid, and goofy. Your supernatural gifts mostly amount to a lot of shimmering gelatinous blurs.And there's more. You can drive a motorboat, clumsily--the boat turns slowly and gets stuck on junk all the time. There's a very simplistic, entirely pointless crafting system, which seems to follow no logic at all--coil springs and alcohol can be combined to craft a health kit, even though just finding health kits lying around would surely do. You have a camera, for reasons that were not quite clear to me, and you can take pictures of things. There is a meter that tracks your sanity, which falls if you spend too much time around monsters--though it only makes your vision a bit blurry.This drab, lifeless town lacks any of the slow-burn dread or looming menace of the towns in Lovecraft's stories. Wandering through, you might encounter small spider-like creatures, called Wylebeasts, which you can dispatch by negotiating the awkward, clunky combat system to execute a pistol or melee attack. Or you might encounter a more formidable foe: loading screens, which are even more treacherous. The game loads if you walk into a building. It loads if you prompt a cutscene or chat with a passerby. It loads if you walk too fast and see more of this unsightly town than it can handle revealing to you. Between missions, or after dying, these loading screens can last several minutes, after which a message to "press any button to continue" appears rather unobtrusively.There's tension in Lovecraft's fiction between the terrifying and the absurd, and of course tales of fish-people and nefarious amphibian monsters are bound to at least verge on the ridiculous. The Sinking City has a tenuous control of tone; it frequently seems less nightmarish than farcical. Grim encounters with the darkly macabre, depicted without the requisite gravitas, elicit laughter rather than fear, and ironically the game's stern humorlessness makes it all the harder to take seriously. Finding the fresh corpse of a local sailor with a pair of axes buried in his chest, your hero simply muses, "You've got to be out of your head to do this to a man," delivered with roughly the feeling of a mundane answering machine message. These sights ought to be harrowing. Instead, they're just flat--or worse, silly.The Sinking City has a tenuous control of tone; it frequently seems less nightmarish than farcical.The Sinking City's problems aren't only technical, but conceptual. It's one thing to clip through objects that are meant to be impassable; it's another to feel, when the game seems to be working, that its design is inelegant, or that its writing lacks wit. Despite the outrageously long conversations you're asked to endure, characterizations are paper thin--what's said conveys plot but expresses no psychological shading. A brewing conflict between different species of human-animal hybrids, while containing some of the overtones of allegorical prejudice found in The Shadow Over Innsmouth, shys from engaging seriously with Lovecraft's noted racism.It's hard to resent a game as unapologetically dweeby as The Sinking City. It's an old-fashioned, bookish mystery rooted in the mythology and mysteries of a pulpy, cult-favorite mid-century American novelist--an effort not without charm, to be sure. But no matter how fond your affection for H.P. Lovecraft and the idea of a wide-eyed, slow-burn literary adventure, the poor design, cliched writing, and lumbering pace make this far more tedious than delightful, let alone unsettling or terrifying.Info from Gamespot.com

Getting humor in video games right is tough. While games share a lot with the medium of film in terms of visual storytelling, the presence of a player introduces an unpredictable variable that can totally blow a joke. You never know if they will miss the gag, look the wrong way at a crucial moment, or ignore a punchline because they're too busy running, shooting, jumping, or looking for their next challenge.Humor is a big part of Journey to the Savage Planet, the first-person "explore-'em-up" and freshman offering from Typhoon Studios. Savage Planet puts you in the role of a space explorer hired by the fourth-best space company in the universe, Kindred Aerospace, and dumps you on a strange world where it's your job to explore and catalog the flora and fauna. The creatures are all a bit goofy, like orb-shaped Dodo-like birds that eat slop and poop valuable resources. Interacting with them elicits one-liners delivered by your AI--which is eager to help you explore, but more eager to warn you about limits to Kindred's legal liability should you meet a horrific demise.The writing is part of the humor of Journey to the Savage Planet, but it's not Typhoon's main focus in getting you to laugh. The game primarily leverages what creative director Alex Hutchinson calls "interactive slapstick," where Savage Planet's systems let you create moments that turn out funny, whether on purpose or by accident."I think the problem with humor in video games traditionally is people have tried not to embrace the player," Hutchinson told GameSpot in an interview during E3 2019. "You know, they basically see it as a movie. So all the humor is in the dialogue. And we have what we hope our witty one-liners happening there as well. But I think the true humor in the game is in the actions the player performs, and it's kind of an interactive slapstick where the player can launch a joke that ends up paying off on themselves. If we get these systemic collisions, then I think it's a new form of humor, because it's based on decisions you made as a player and the wacky consequences that float out of it."Hutchinson was previously creative director for Far Cry 4, a game known for its in-game systems sometimes interacting in unexpected and hilarious ways. Moments like those served as inspiration for what Typhoon is trying to do in Savage Planet."In Far Cry 4, there was nothing funnier than seeing a bear on fire rush into the camp and kill your friend after you'd thrown a molotov cocktail 30 seconds earlier, and it was a joke you created," he said while appearing on GameSpot's E3 stage. "So we're trying to get that sense of interactive comedy into the game, because one-liners and things are funny, but they're funny once."Making A Bet On LaughsWhile those moments feel random or unexpected for the person playing, they're not completely emergent from the design side. Hutchinson said the process of creating interactive slapstick is partially about iterating unexpected moments, and partially about working systems into the game that the team knows will lead to funny moments.Hutchinson described filling an encounter with explosive pods, for instance, knowing that one stray shot could turn a battle with a dangerous creature into a deadly fireworks display that could kill the player, or trigger other interactions they might not see coming. But the player's options are finite, as are the behaviors of creatures and other elements in the game--so from a design standpoint, the team knows how things are going to work, and therefore, is often looking to set up ridiculous situations."I think there are some [mechanics and level designs] where you make a bet," Hutchinson explained. "...You bet this is what can happen, and then we have to work on it and iterate to make sure it sort of happens. And then other [funny moments] just start to emerge and when they emerge, you can reinforce them, you know? Then you can make them happen elsewhere in the game, or encourage the player to do them."Mechanical jokes might be the focus of its humor, but there also is plenty in the way of comedic writing in Savage Planet as well. Kindred's position as the fourth-best aerospace company means that it's perpetually strapped for cash, so despite the fact you work for the corporation, you're also bombarded with its ads.Those commercials are largely gags--they look like those old TV infomercials in which some hapless actor catastrophically tears open a bag of chips or slams a hammer through a wall, then mugs for the camera to show us how frustrated they are with their own foibles. But the ads shown in Savage Planet's E3 preview, for things like gross space food Grob or a mall for sea monkeys, double as world-building. They set up a satirical universe where even on a distant planet, you can't escape the ever-present force of someone trying to sell you something.The Gravitational Pull Of The GunSeveral of Savage Planet's in-game ads focus on the items you wield in your left hand as you explore. Those items are meant to yield clever ways to solve problems and deal with the hazardous life you encounter--as opposed to the gun in your right hand, which provides a more straightforward solution.Hutchinson said he had hoped to keep that gun out of your hand in favor of goofier, nonviolent solutions to problems, like using bait to draw creatures toward other things that might eat them, or planting springy pads in their paths that might send them over cliffs."The biggest challenge is always to rise above the noise and to offer something compelling and unique that will hopefully resonate with people," Hutchinson said. "So, you know, we chose to be optimistic and upbeat and colorful and humorous, and also to try and get you to use different tools, you know, than just the gun. Because we're never going to be the best shooter on the planet."Despite Hutchinson's best efforts, though, Typhoon couldn't manage to keep a gun out of Journey to the Savage Planet, he said. But the studio is still working on making it possible to avoid firing it if you don't want to when the game releases in 2020."We tried really hard to emphasize that stuff, but this sort of gravitational pull of a gun was too much to bear," he said. "A player, after playing, was like, 'I love these tools, but sometimes I just want to shoot him in the face.' ... So the goal for the game is to say that you don't have to use the gun, but obviously you can--we'll see how it pans out. At the moment, we haven't figured out a way to make it so you can beat the bosses without the gun. But that would be the goal.""I have a very soft spot for nonviolent approaches in video games," Hutchinson also said on the GameSpot stage. "There's a joke at the start of Far Cry 4, which is, essentially, if you just listen to [Pagan Min] and wait, he lets you do the thing you came for without having to murder anybody. So these things, I'll sneak it in as much as I can--I wanted to do it again on this game. It's very tricky but we're getting closer and closer. I can't promise that there will be a purely nonviolent way through the game, but there's often a way to avoid [using a gun] if you want."Info from Gamespot.com

BioWare's Anthem released in February this year, and it wasn't a huge critical success. Part of the reason why the game struggled, according to EA CEO Andrew Wilson, is because it attempts to appeal to two different audiences. He talks about the game's struggles and opportunities for future growth and success in a new interview."We brought together these two groups of players who were making this emotional value calculation on two different vectors," Wilson told GameDaily. "One was traditional BioWare story-driven content, and the other was this action-adventure type content. About the 30 or 40 hour mark they really had to come together and start working in on the elder game. At that point everyone kind of went, 'Oh, hang a minute.' Now the calculation is off."It's off because I've got a friend who sits in this other category of player. They want to play the game a certain way. I want to play the game a certain way. The promise was we can play together, and that's not working very well. Oh, by the way I'm used to 100 hours of BioWare story, and that's not what I got,'" Wilson explained. "Or, 'I expected that this game would have meaningfully advanced the action component that we'd seen in games like Destiny before, and I don't feel like it has.'"While Anthem might have struggled out of the gate, Wilson said EA is committed to supporting the game in the long-run. In fact, he mentioned that Anthem could have a "7-10 year cycle." Wilson said EA feels good about investing in Anthem in the long-run because the game has a strong foundation to build on."If we believed that at the very core the world wasn't compelling people, if we believed at the very core that the characters weren't compelling for people, or the Javelin suits weren't compelling, or traversing the world and participating in the world wasn't compelling then provided we hadn't made promises to our players... we might not invest further," Wilson said. "IP lives for generations, and runs in these seven to ten year cycles. So, if I think about Anthem on a seven to ten year cycle, it may not have had the start that many of us wanted, including our players. I feel like that team is really going to get there with something special and something great, because they've demonstrated that they can."The full interview at GameDaily is in-depth and wide-ranging, touching on a number of other subjects including loot boxes, layoffs, and a wider look at the future of EA. Go read it.At E3 this year, Anthem lead producer Ben Irving said he believes Anthem has a "very bright future.""We've learned a lot these last few months, we really want to make the game better, we believe Anthem can be a really amazing game," he explained. "We know we have some work to do, we just want to work with the community and build it together and make it the game that everyone wants it to be."Info from Gamespot.com

Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson and a series of other high-ranking executives at the publisher declined their cash bonuses for the latest financial year which ended March 31. This was confirmed in a Securities & Exchange Commission filing dated June 21 and reported on by GameDaily."Our CEO and his staff requested that they receive no performance cash bonus award for fiscal 2019," reads a line from the filing.The filing mentioned that Wilson and other executives declined their cash bonuses due to EA's poor financial results in Fiscal Year 2019, and "in order to maintain alignment with our pay-for-performance executive compensation philosophy.""While we are disappointed with our fiscal 2019 results, we understand the challenges we face, and we will continue to focus on how we can apply the strengths of our Company to capitalize on our opportunities," the statement explains.EA made $4.95 billion for fiscal 2019, which was down from $5.15 billion during the previous fiscal year. The downturn in revenue might sound surprising given EA landed a huge hit with Apex Legends during the year. However, the title was only released in February 2019, which was just ahead of the end of the fiscal year in March. EA also had a few high-profile misses during the year, including Battlefield V and Anthem, both of which underperformed.The other EA executives who declined their cash bonuses for the year included CFO Blake Jorgensen, CTO Kenneth Moss, chief marketing officer Chris Bruzzo, and chief studios officer Laura Miele. Patrick Soderlund, who quit EA in August 2018, also reportedly gave up his bonus. EA reportedly offered Soderlund $20 million in equity bonuses to stay at the company, but even so, he left to establish Embark Studios in Sweden. At the time, it was believed that Soderlund took the $20 million with him, but GameDaily reports that he did not; the funds are instead reportedly going into a pool to help secure new hires, among other purposes.According to GameDaily, the EA executives declined their cash bonuses and instead put the money into a bonus pool to be paid to employees. Combined, the bonuses amount to around $4.8 million to be paid to employees, and that doesn't count the $20 million equity bonus from Soderlund, according to GameDaily.The SEC filing also reveals that all of EA's Named Executive Officers (NEOs) received an increase to their base salary in Fiscal 2019. Wilson now makes $1.192 million annually, while Jorgensen gets $850,000. Moss and Bruzzo make $675,000 every year. Miele, who only just started as chief studios officer, makes $675,000 annually as well. Soderlund, who left EA during fiscal 2019, made $475,572 as a base salary. All numbers are in USD.As you can see in the chart below, base salary is just the beginning when it comes to total compensation. Wilson's total pay package, including stock awards and other compensation, was $18.3 million for the latest fiscal year. That is just about half of what he earned the year prior. The "non-equity incentive plan compensation" is empty for all of the NEOs, and that's because they declined their cash bonuses.In other EA news, Wilson says he believes BioWare's Anthem can find success in the future following its slow start earlier this year. Info from Gamespot.com

The new Avengers game from Square Enix that was revealed at E3 this year has some big names behind it. It was already confirmed that Naughty Dog veteran Shaun Escayg is the game's creative director and longtime EA/Visceral developer Stephen Barry is game director, and now we've learned a few of the other names working on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC title.Crystal Dynamics studio head Scott Amos told GI.biz that the developer also hired Dave Fifield to work on multiplayer and Vince Napoli for combat design. Fifield worked on a number of Call of Duty games at Activision, while he also contributed to the Halo series at Microsoft. Napoli, meanwhile, recently worked on Sony where he was lead systems designer for God of War; specifically, he oversaw the development of Kratos' axe, chain blade, and shield/bare hand combat design."We cherry-picked the best of the best and said: 'Let's put this together in a new way for something bigger than we've ever done,'" Amos said.Square Enix appears to be putting a lot of muscle behind the new Avengers game. It's assembled five studios to jointly develop the title including Crystal Dynamics in Redwood Shores, California, as well as sister studio Crystal Northwest in Bellevue, Washington. Nixxes Software in the Netherlands is also contributing to The Avengers, while Eidos Montreal is also working on it. In addition, Square Enix Japan has a "tech group" contributing to the new title."We've literally had to put these five studios together and say: 'We're going this far. Tomb Raider, awesome. Rise of the Tomb Raider, even better. Shadow of the Tomb Raider... and it's like no, we're going beyond the boundaries,'" Amos said.The new Avengers game launches in May 2020, though an Avengers beta coming to PS4 first will kick things off before release. Square Enix's announcement also included details like cooperative gameplay, free post-release DLC, and the all-star voice cast includes Troy Baker, Laura Bailey, Nolan North, Travis Willingham, and Jeff Schine.In other news, Marvel is bringing Avengers: Endgame back to theatres with extra content. Maybe the re-release will help the film eclipse Avatar to become the highest-grossing movie ever.Info from Gamespot.com

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite appears to be another big success for developer Niantic Labs. According to data from research company SensorTower, the free-to-play mobile game pulled in $300,000 combined from the Apple iOS and Google Play mobile platforms during its first 24 hours of availability. And that number only counts revenue in the United States and United Kingdom.According to the report, Wizards Unite also reached 400,000 installs after its first day.Wizards Unite is nowhere near as popular or profitable as Niantic's previous release, Pokemon Go. That title generated around $2 million in revenue after its first day, according to SensorTower.Wizards Unite is currently featured in the iOS app store's Games page front and center, which is surely helping its visibility and in turn profitability. Of course the game is also based on one of the world's most popular media franchises, Harry Potter, and its free-to-play model gives a low barrier to entry. It'll be interesting to see if Wizards Unite can succeed in delivering new content regularly to keep players interested and engaged (and spending money) on the game.For lots more on Wizards Unite, be sure to check out GameSpot's rundown of everything you need to know, including Wizarding challenges, wand choice, friend codes, microtransactions, and more.Info from Gamespot.com

The new Avengers game from Crystal Dynamics has been likened to Bungie's Destiny in that you'll be able to team up, online to complete missions with other players. But that is only an option. Crystal Dynamics boss Scott Amos confirmed in an interview that the game is playable offline."We want somebody to be able to go buy a disc and never have to go online," he explained to GI.biz. "You don't have to. You can have a complete experience and have fun."For those who do want to play online, Square Enix is promising a robust, ongoing, and evolving experience with new characters and locations added over time--and for free."The idea, from the beginning, is that we want you to be able to customise your hero; how they look, how they play, the gear they have and how they use it," Amos said. "Your Black Widow could be different to my Black Widow--just a little, maybe a lot depending on what you favour and how you unlock things."The Avengers game will make extra money beyond the upfront cost through various microtransactions for cosmetic items. There are no loot boxes or pay-to-win mechanics, and Amos promises, "No gameplay paywalls.""We want people to be able to play together and go on this journey, but we also want to say if you want to over-invest in your characters and customise them, you've got it," Amos said. "We also have ways for you to earn a lot of those things. We want to give players as much flexibility as possible because it's for them. We make this for the fans. At the end of the day, we will listen to them and get feedback from them and we'll adjust everything to serve that need... We want to reward them for the hours they're investing in our game."The new Avengers game launches in May 2020 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, while it's also coming to Google Stadia. The game features a number of iconic MCU heroes such as Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, and the Hulk, but the game doesn't use the likenesses of MCU actors. Some people were not happy about the new character designs, but Crystal Dynamics won't change them.Info from Gamespot.com