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Nintendo Direct returns on Thursday with Wii U and 3DS news
The next Nintendo Direct takes place on November 12th at 2PM PT (10PM GMT), and it promises news and trailers for a slew of Wii U and 3DS games. This is Nintendo's first live-streamed news program since April -- and it's the first since the death of Nintendo President Satoru Iwata. For many viewers, Iwata encapsulated the appeal of Nintendo Direct, as he helped the company have fun in delivering its news (and appeared to have an adorable banana fetish). Former Nintendo of America and Pokémon USA President Tatsumi Kimishima is now the head of Nintendo. For its Thursday show, Nintendo promises updates on coming Wii U and 3DS games, and it says this Nintendo Direct will not feature news about its coming console, the NX, or its mobile endeavors. Catch region-specific streams of Nintendo Direct on Twitch (US, UK).
Amazon's Echo smart speaker is coming to retail stores
You no longer have to buy online to give the Amazon Echo a shot. Amazon will soon sell the smart, voice-guided speaker in more than 3,000 retail stores, including Brookstone, Fry's, Home Depot, PC Richard & Son, RadioShack, Sears and Staples (which previously sold it on the web). The rollout is taking place over the next few weeks, and a few big stores are conspicuously absent in the mix -- Best Buy, anyone? Still, this beats worrying about holiday shipping headaches.
We hate Valve's Steam Controller because it's different
My stomach tied itself into a knot as I read the gaming community's first impressions of Valve's final Steam Controller. "It's cheap feeling," many of them said, "difficult and frustrating to use." Forum posts, tweets and reviews all bemoaned how different the touchpads felt compared to traditional analog sticks, accusing it of fixing something that wasn't broken.The general consensus seemed to be that the Steam Controller was a mistake: A drastic, unnecessary step away from the tried and true layout of the 16-button, dual-analog gamepad standard. I felt betrayed and even a little offended -- but it wasn't Valve's experimental gamepad that let me down (I love that little thing), it was the gaming community that decided to turn a cold shoulder to innovation.
SceneSkim movie app does exactly what it says it would
As much as I love watching movies, I'm not doing it for work and don't really need to worry about finding a specific scene or line of dialogue as fast as possible. But I'm not a film scholar or student, so those folks have it a little tougher when it comes to such matters. To that end, researchers have at the University of California Berkeley have developed SceneSkim. It's a bit of tech that leverages captions, scripts and plot summaries to speed up searching for scenes in flicks rather than manually fast forwarding or rewinding. There's a video of it in action below and it looks pretty slick, actually and should be a boon for the people who need quick access to specific movie scenes.
Time Warner Cable's Roku TV test starts in NYC for $10 per month
We've been telling you about Time Warner Cable's plan to test streaming TV for its internet-only customers since before it was officially announced, but now customers can actually sign up for it. If having a cable box is part of what you hated about cable TV, now internet customers can get access to the TWC TV app on a variety of devices without adding a box or having a tech come out. During the trial, testers will get a free Roku 3 player, and the cheapest plan (with channels like ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and TBS among the 20+ included) starts at just $10 per month on a 12 month contract . Adding Showtime and Starz doubles the price, and testers can get a pretty healthy package with channels like Disney and ESPN for $50 per month. As we detailed when it announced, there's no DVR with this setup, but it is an easy way to get TV without some of the hassles. The main drawback here? Unlike something like Sling TV, this is only available to Time Warner Cable customers, and during the test it's only in NYC -- check out the site for all the details.
What's on your HDTV: 'Fallout 4', 'Better Call Saul' Blu-ray
This week's big release is Fallout 4, which takes gamers back to its familiar post-apocalyptic setting. There's also a new StarCraft II entry with Legacy of the Void, and Rise of the Tomb Raider arrives on Xbox platforms. Netflix has a new series from David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, while the latter's Better Call Saul series arrives on Blu-ray. Also on Blu-ray this week for the first time is Bad Boys II, while Into the Badlands premieres Sunday night on AMC. Look after the break to check out each day's highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).
Break out your paintbrushes again: Twitch launches Bob Ross Mondays
When Bob Ross began painting happy trees and sunlit fields on public television in 1983, there was no such thing as Twitch, no online streaming and certainly no KappaRoss. But now, there's Bob Ross Mondays on Twitch. The streaming site will air The Joy of Painting, Ross' beloved show, every Monday from 3PM PST to 9:30PM PST, starting tonight. Isn't life in the future grand?
'Resident Evil' the play is better than I expected
The first Resident Evil games were my favorites. With comically bad dialogue like the now infamous "Jill sandwich" meme, tension built on scare tactics, gore and the thrill of a shotgun blast, simpler was better, or at least more fun. As soon as the franchise started to take itself too seriously, I stopped paying attention. So when Capcom decided to make the video game horror franchise into a stage play, I feared it'd either steer straight into closed-space melodrama (i.e., actors trapped in a room; one has a dark secret) or that it'd simply have little to no relevance to Resident Evil. So, with trepidation, I went to see Biohazard: The Stage (the series' title here in Japan) when it opened for a limited one-week run right before Halloween. Was I going to be bored to tears? Despite an unnecessarily fashionable Tyrant and a severe lack of blood, I was hooked for all two-and-a-half hours of it. And that even included a pop-dance interlude.
Fallout 4's Pip-Boy is a glorified smartphone case
"The Pip-Boy is an important part of Fallout and we love it so much we made a real one." Those words, delivered by game director Todd Howard at developer Bethesda Softworks' first-ever E3 media briefing this year, triggered cheers around the world. And thus, the Fallout 4 Pip-Boy Edition was born: a $120 special edition peripheral bundled with Fallout 4 that aims to mimic the game's wrist-bound menu and stat-tracking system. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the premium version of the game proved insanely popular, prompting Bethesda to apologize when it couldn't make any more units to meet demand. Not bad for a rather awkward looking piece of light brown plastic that sits on your arm and holds your cellphone. But is it actually worth the hype and high price?
18 ways to (nearly) die with Lara Croft, Tomb Raider
Lara Croft is basically a superhero. She leaps with the power of someone bitten by a radioactive kangaroo, climbs sheer rock faces like her hands are coated in glue and spontaneously zip-lines down hundreds of ancient, convenient ropes like she's strolling down to Starbucks on a Monday morning. In Rise of the Tomb Raider, players will most certainly die a few times, whether in firefights with hordes of gunmen, while running across a rapidly crumbling sheet of ice or jumping across gigantic crevasses. What's incredible (and absurd) is all of the times Lara Croft survives.
ABC's 'BattleBots' reboot will come back for a second season
Good news if you liked ABC's resurrection of BattleBots for the modern era: it's sticking around. The network has renewed BattleBots for a second season, albeit with some tweaks. It'll preserve the single-elimination tourney that you saw in the first run, but it'll double the number of competitors to include everyone from "expert roboticists" to "families on a mission." Logically, past winners will come back for another shot at glory. It's too soon to say if these changes will spice up ABC's robotic wars, but the show's audience grew significantly over the first season -- don't be shocked if there's a third when all is said and done.
Comcast leak shows that data caps aren't about congestion
Many internet providers with data caps (especially in mobile) will tell you that those limits exist to prevent network congestion -- that's not necessarily true, but it's the official line. However, Comcast isn't even trying to make that claim. Leaked support documents show that the cable giant's customer service reps will deny that the expanding internet caps are about congestion in any form. Instead, the ceilings are about "fairness" and offering a "more flexible policy" to subscribers. Also, Comcast is telling agents to avoid describing cap-free areas as having unlimited usage. Instead, staffers are supposed to tell you that unfettered areas are still subject to Comcast's longstanding 250GB soft cap -- the company just isn't "currently enforcing" the limit. In other words... it's unlimited.
Vizio's high-end 4K TVs are on sale at (some) Best Buy stores
After more than a year of waiting Vizio finally opened up orders for two models from its "Reference Series" line, and now it's expanding the rollout. At Best Buy's Magnolia Design Center locations (they're a bit more limited than the regular Magnolia in-store units you're probably used to seeing, here's a list), well-heeled buyers can order up a $6,000 65-inch Ultra High Definition TV packing Dolby's HDR tech, or go big with the $130,000 120-inch model. Of course, at that price, some of you may want to window shop before making a purchase, and a rep told one AVS Forum poster that they may have in-store samples coming. This close to CES you may want to wait for what 2016's TVs have to offer, but Netflix has that ultra wide color tech, 384 LED lighting zones plus UHD apps from Netflix, Amazon and Vudu.
Syfy will premiere 'The Expanse' online before it hits cable
If enough time has passed for you to be comfortable calling the network "Syfy," perhaps you'll check out its new TV show. The Expanse is based on a popular series of novels by the same name, following a detective and a ship's captain pursuing the case of a missing young woman before it uncovers a larger universe-spanning conspiracy (which is what usually happens). While its two-night TV premiere is planned for December 14th/15th, the first episode will hit streaming services later this month on November 23rd. Of course that includes Syfy.com, the Syfy Now app and On Demand, but also Hulu, Amazon, Google Play, Vudu, iTunes, Playstation, Xbox, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Wikia, IGN, IMDb, Good Reads, Crave Online and Roku. The only question now is whether or not it's actually worth watching even for free -- hopefully the trailer embedded after the break helps answer that one.
Former Sony Pictures exec snags the rights to a 'GamerGate' movie
Former head of Sony Pictures Amy Pascal is working on a film based on a coming memoir from Zoe Quinn, the game developer at the heart of the online controversy known as "GamerGate." Quinn's memoir, Crash Override: How To Save The Internet From Itself, is due to be published in September 2016 by Touchstone (a Simon & Schuster imprint), Deadline reports. Pascal, who now heads a production company under Sony, won the rights to Crash Override following a bidding war, according to the site. The film is tentatively named Control Alt Delete and Scarlet Johansson is looking at the script.
Playdate: We've got the 'Need for Speed' on PlayStation 4
It's time to kick some tires and light some fires, folks. The new Need for Speed, out this week, is awesome. More importantly, it shows exactly what can happen when a video game publisher (Electronic Arts, in this case) says that a developer can take a year off to work on a game rather than churn out sub-par sequels on an annual basis. Usually when the word "cinematic" is thrown around to describe a game, that means big explosions and scripted events -- not usually the visual style. The team at Ghost Games doesn't subscribe to that theory and rather than focusing on "water-cooler moments" that only happen once, it instead made Need for Speed look as much like a movie shot on film as possible. Need proof? At 6PM Eastern / 3PM Pacific Sean and myself are broadcasting two hours of the game on Twitch.
The first full 'Warcraft' movie trailer is, in a word, epic
Whether you're a veteran World of Warcraft player, a Hearthstone newbie or someone who loves a great fantasy story, the trailer for Legendary Pictures' Warcraft is captivating. Warcraft is due in theaters on June 10th. It's Activision Blizzard's first foray into movie-making -- but it's definitely not the last. The company today announced its own, in-house film and TV business, Activision Blizzard Studios. It's already working on a Skylanders cartoon series and films based on the Call of Duty franchise. Warcraft doesn't fall under this new studio's umbrella.
Apple TV review (2015): A huge leap forward, unless you want 4K
For years, Apple TV has been like a perpetually ignored child, eclipsed by its overachieving siblings, the iPhone and iPad. Design-wise, it hasn't changed at all since 2010, and it's been shackled with one of the most archaic Apple interfaces around, which harkens back to the iPod days. All the while Roku and even Amazon have stepped up their game considerably. Now, with the fourth-generation Apple TV, the set-top box that's been deemed merely as a "hobby" by its parent has finally come into its own. It has more powerful hardware, a significantly redesigned remote and an operating system that's worthy of an Apple product in 2015. And finally, there's a genuine app store, which turns Apple TV into a legitimate platform for entertainment and gaming in your living room. It isn't quite the "future of television" that Apple is promising, but it's getting there.
Activision starts a studio for 'Skylanders,' 'Call of Duty' TV and film
Activision Blizzard today launched a studio in charge of taking its franchises from the console to the silver screen, starting with a film franchise based on Call of Duty and an animated television series all about Skylanders. Under Activision Blizzard Studios, Skylanders Academy is in production now with showrunner Eric Rogers, who is best known as a writer for Futurama. It features the voices of Justin Long as Spryo, Ashley Tisdale as Stealth Elf, Jonathan Banks as Eruptor and Norm Macdonald as Glumshanks. Details are scarce for the Call of Duty film project, but in a press release Activision calls out Advanced Warfare and Black Ops 3 as examples of the series' potential. Plus, it notes a possibility of television adaptations for the franchise.
'Overwatch Origins Edition' will be on PC, PS4 and XB1 next year (update)
Until now only a PC version had been announced for Blizzard's first all-new game in years, but today a splash page on its Battle.net website promises it will come to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Overwatch Origins Edition is expected to arrive "on or before" June 21st, 2016, although the link to BuyOverwatch.com isn't working yet. The listing itself has very little information other than promising "all digital content included with Origins Edition will be available by launch," but an eagle-eyed Reddit poster spotted what may be a full listing of items on a videogame retailer's website. The shooter has generated hype with a public beta and many Twitch streaming sessions, but for now it's just one more reason (besides that Warcraft movie trailer) to keep an eye on BlizzCon over the next few days. Update: Overwatch is up for pre-order at BuyOverwatch.com. The standard edition costs $40 and is only available for PC. The Origins Edition is $60 and is confirmed for PS4, Xbox One and PC. There's also a Collector's Edition (PS4, Xbox One and PC) for $130.
