According to Jay Ong, Marvel’s vice president of games, Insomniac’s Spider-Man game is just the beginning for Marvel’s ambitious plan to bring its superheroes to consoles.
“When I joined Marvel two years ago, I came in with a mandate to usher in a new era for Marvel Games,” Ong told Polygon in an interview. “We have a treasure trove of the best superhero characters on earth. What can we do with this to create truly epic games?
“Is [Spider-Man] a signal of things to come? Oh, yes. Absolutely. And we can’t wait to tell the world about it.”
Over the past few years, Marvel Games’ output has been primarily on mobile (Avengers Academy, Contest of Champions, Future Fight), on PC (Marvel Heroes) and for Disney Infinity and Lego games. Marvel fans haven’t had their own Batman: Arkham equivalent. But with multiple Marvel console games in development, it sounds like that’s changing.
Ong said there was a lot about Marvel Games’ plans for consoles that he couldn’t talk about. There are existing partnerships with Telltale Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Warner Bros.’ TT Games to make titles based on Marvel’s properties, but he indicated there’s a lot more in the works, some of which we’ll hear more about later this year.
Marvel wants to work with the best game developers in the business, Ong said, teams that share the company’s passion for its heroes and villains. But it’s being choosy about who it works with, and which teams work on which properties.
“One of the things we really focus on in terms of our new strategy is that we all believe that great games drive the brand and great games are what our fans really deserve,” Ong said. “The question is, ‘How we can get there?’ The thing we landed on is to be really selective with who we partner with. Extremely selective. Right now I would say that out of every 10 opportunities we look at, we maybe do one.”
Ong said Marvel Games has a set of criteria as it looks to work with publishers and developers.
“What we look at first and foremost is the talent level of partner,” he said. “Are they world class in building the games we’re talking about? They have to have world-class talent. They have to be able to invest the resources to make that talent sing. Equally important is, do they have passion for the IP they’re working on? Do they share the same ambition? Do they love the character? We look for passion, that comes through in the first 30 seconds.
“One of our mantras is authenticity; it’s easy to make a game with Spider-Man on the label, but it’s much harder to make it truly authentic in a way that reflects Peter Parker, the character.” Insomniac Games and Spider-Man creative director Bryan Intihar, Ong said, embody that mantra.
When publisher Activision was in charge of developing and publishing Spider-Man games, those titles were often tied to the release of movies or annual publishing schedules. The quality of those games varied, and while they were often successful commercially, Ong indicated that Marvel Games doesn’t want to push games to market just to coincide with a theatrical release. (The upcoming Spider-Man game is “wholly original” and unrelated to 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, the next Marvel feature film starring the web-slinger.)
“We are absolutely obsessed about [quality],” Ong said. “That is our North Star. We always say ‘Great is not good enough. We’re going for truly epic.'”
Ong said that if a future Marvel Games title lines up with the release of a Marvel Studios movie, great, but “in this modern day and age, that model doesn’t work anymore.”
“Things like [games] you cannot under-resource,” he said. “You can’t not give the development time … to do justice to the game. We think, ‘How do we make the game better? How do we help our partners make the game better?'”
It’s not yet clear when Marvel, Sony and Insomniac’s Spider-Man game — or Telltale’s unnamed Marvel game, which Ong says will delight fans — will be released. But those titles represent a new course for Marvel Games.
“Building these franchises, and building these characters [at Marvel Games], this is that first big milestone from this team,” Ong said. “This is a huge ambitious project.”
In a year where Marvel Studios will be releasing a sequel to the wildly popular Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor: Ragnarok, which will wrap up the Thor trilogy with Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk along for the ride, somehow, all eyes seem to be elsewhere. Spider-Man: Homecoming is also coming out next year and after Tom Holland killed it as Spidey in Captain America: Civil War, it is more than understandable. But Holland may not be the lone webslinger in the MCU.
It was announced recently by Deadline that Community star Donald Glover is joinging the first Spider-Man movie that will be part of the MCU in an unspecified role. Though, any Marvel fan worth their salt has a damn good idea who he may be playing. Yes, speculation is already running rampant that Glover will be playing the Ultimate Universe version of Spider-Man, Miles Morales. If that turns out to be true, that would mean that at some point, there will be more than one Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But how likely is it? Well, let’s take a look at the possible evidence.
Glover has been circling Spider-Man for ages now. There was a massive fan campaign to get him to play the character back when Sony was in the process of doing their Amazing Spider-Man reboot. Glover was way behind the idea but ultimately it went to Andrew Garfield. In addition, he has been providing the voice for Miles Morales in the Ultimate Spider-Man animated TV series, so he already has a strong familiarity with the character.
For those who may not know, Miles Morales took up the Spider-Man mantle in the Ultimate Marvel Universe (which takes place outside of the main Marvel Comics Universe) following the death of Peter Parker. He is a young kid of African American and Hispanic descent and has powers similar to Parker’s Spider-Man, but with some differences. The character first appeared in 2011 and quickly became a huge hit with fans and there has been demand to see him on the big screen pretty much from the get go.
Glover being cast is surely raising some flags in favor of Morales finally coming to the big screen, and his casting seems to really fit what Marvel seems to be doing with Spider-Man: Homecoming. So far, it seems to be a pretty diverse cast of both young and old and it looks like it won’t be just a bunch of white people running around in Queens, New York. However, given Glover’s history with the character of Mile Morales, it seems very unlikely that Marvel would ignore that entirely. They are smart.
Parker and Morales have met in the comics, so there is definitely precedent for the characters sharing some time fighting crime. Plus, Kevin Feige and Co. really need to find a way to make Homecoming and Spidey in general different enough to have us not feel fatigue from the various reboots the property has gone through in a relatively short period of time. Adding a second Spider-Man to the mix would be a way to do that and fans would be likely very excited about Morales joining up with The Avengers.
Lastly, if we are grasping at straws for evidence here, in the first season of Daredevil on Netflix, Foggy Nelson did make a reference to a “Morales” who worked at the law firm he and Matt Murdock worked at. There is almost no way that was a complete coincidence. The only glaring problem is that Glover is 32 and the character of Miles Morales is much younger, at least in the comic books. Perhaps Glover will be Miles’ dad? Uncle? Both of whom play a role in the comics.
It seems like Miles Morales is an eventuality for the MCU, but we just don’t know if he will ever share the screen with Peter Parker. Rumors are circulating that the 2018 Sony animated Spider-Man movie will feature Morales, but that has yet to be confirmed. If Marvel is building to a Sinister Six movie down the line, which evidence suggests they may be, than planting the seeds to have Parker and Morales take on Doc Ock and the gang together could be a really cool way to go with. We will have to wait and see when Spider-Man: Homecoming drops on July 7, 2017.
The official Minecraft game has been recently released for Windows 10 users, but it is still being marked as “Edition Beta: on the Store. Now the game has received a pretty important update, which adds a couple of new features.
The new update allows players to start creating with basic redstone components, explore new desert temples, collect four types of cute, fluffy rabbits, spruce up dwellings with five new door types, download new biome settler character skins and much more. Here’s how the official changelog looks like:
What’s New in Version 0.13.0 Basic Redstone Circuits, including Redstone Wire, the first set of Redstone Producers (Daylight Sensors, Pressure Plates, Tripwire Hooks, and more), and the first set of Redstone Consumers (activator rails, note blocks, TNT, Trapdoors, and more). The rest of the Redstone functionality is right around the corner…stay tuned. Desert Temples! But maybe stay off the roof…can’t say we didn’t warn you. Keep zombies out with Spruce, Birch, Jungle, Acacia, and Dark Oak doors. Cute fluffy crop-eating bunnies! Biome Settlers Pack, with new skins from the Desert, Tundra & Forest.
The game is available for a price of $6.99 along with other inside-app purchase, so if you’re interested, go ahead and download it. And if you’re a Windows Minecraft gamer, here are some other stories that you might be interested in.
Microsoft has recently released an update for its Windows 10 Movies & TV app, bringing a couple of useful features especially for desktop users. Let’s have a look at which these are and whether they matter or not. When it announced that it’s going to rebrand the Xbox Music app to Groove Music, Microsoft also talked about the new Movies & TV app in Windows 10. And the first important update has started rolling out for the service.
Movies & TV App for Windows 10 gets new features
Microsoft representative Ellen Kilbourne said that the app has received the following updates:
During playback, you can double-click or use the ESC key to toggle in and out of full-screen mode
Extras that come with bundles won’t flood your collection – they are now listed on the detail page of the main title in the bundle
Those who are members of the Windows Insider program are being further asked to provide feedback on this app, as it allows Microsoft to see what’s wrong and what works well.
So, what’s your take so far on the app, do you like or do you think there are still many features that have to be deployed? Leave your comment below and let us know.
Minecraft is probably the most popular game in the world, and Microsoft did the right thing when it included the game into Windows Store. But, some players are reporting that they’re unable to download the game due to an error 0x803f7003, so here are a few tips if you’re facing this problem, too.
Can’t download Minecraft from Windows Store? Follow this
Solution 1 – Try to refresh the download multiple times
I know this sounds like a dumb solution, actually it doesn’t sound like a solution at all, but some users reported that they were able to download Minecraft normally after hitting the download button a lot of times, so before you do anything else you can send a few minutes repeatedly pressing the download button again and again.
If this really proves to be the wrong ‘solution,’ then problem probably lays in the Windows Store, so you should do something with it.
Solution 2 – Reset Windows Store
As I said the problem probably lays in the Windows Store, so the first thing you can do is resetting the Windows Store, and then try to download Minecraft again. Here’s how to reset the Windows Store:
Go to Search and type wsreset.exe
Press Enter and let the process reset your Windows Store
Now, login to your Microsoft Account once again, and try to download Minecraft. If the problem is still present, you should check out our article about solving Windows Store problems for more solutions.
If you’re still unable to download the game from Windows Store, you should look for additional solutions on Minecraft and Windows forums, hopefully these guys figured out some other solution.
If you have any other Windows 10-related issues you can check for the solution in our Windows 10 Fix section.
