If you’re old enough to remember the original PlayStation launching, then you’ll know how big of a deal switching to optical media was. Rather than shipping an expensive cartridge full of chips, games were burnt on to cheap spinning discs. It didn’t take long for other home consoles to follow and discs have been the preferred media for home consoles ever since.
With the launch of the Switch$299.99 at Amazon, Nintendo is reverting back to cartridge media for a home console. Nintendo handhelds have stuck with cartridges ever since the Game Boy launched, but there wasn’t really any alternative. For a home console, though, it poses a big problem in the form of pricing.
Inevitably, cross platform games will be released targeting the Xbox One$296.88 at Amazon, PS4, and Switch. You only have to look at listings for Puyo Puyo Tetris to see the challenge Switch developers (and Nintendo) face. On PS4 the game costs $29.99, but on Switch it’s $39.99.
The reason, as highlighted by Eurogamer, is one of manufacturing cost. Optical media, even Blu-ray discs, are very cheap to mass produce. Cartridges are relatively-speaking much more expensive. They also aren’t a set cost.
Regardless of whether you burn 5GB or 40GB to a Blu-ray disc the media costs the same. Switch cartridges on the other hand, escalate in price depending on whether you need 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB or 32GB of storage. They also get more expensive per cartridge the smaller the batch ordered.
If you only own a Switch, then the price difference doesn’t really matter as you are stuck paying $39.99. However, many gamers will own, or plan to own, a PS4 and a Switch, much like many have owned a home console and a 3DS. In that case, Nintendo will lose out on cross-platform game sales to the PS4 or Xbox One due to the price differential. The PS4/Xbox One are significantly more powerful than Switch meaning the same game will inevitably look better and run faster while also being cheaper.
The pricing issue is compounded by the fact Nintendo insists that digital versions of a game offered through the eShop must be priced the same as physical versions. So opting to invest in a large SD card and only downloading games won’t save you any cash.
With time and the continued success of the Switch, economies of scale should see manufacturing costs fall. But for the foreseeable future, Switch games are going to be more expensive than the same game on another platform. In fact, manufacturing costs will mean they are always more expensive to produce than the optical disc equivalent.
Will this impact a publisher’s decision to release games on Switch. Potentially, yes. But Switch sales will be key. If Nintendo continues to sell millions of units then the market exists to make releasing on the platform viable. And the more Switch sold, the bigger the cartridge orders can be, and therefore the cheaper they become.
Steven Spielberg changed the game 22 years ago when he released the dinosaur epic Jurassic Park, which remains one of the most successful and popular movies Hollywood has ever seen. Among those featured in the movie were kid actors Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards, who played the forever-traumatized grandchildren of Richard Attenborough. In the two decades since becoming famous for running from velociraptors, where are they now? We dug up some pretty interesting facts to catch you up to (carbon) date.
Now, here’s something that’ll make you feel super-old: Richards, now 36 (!) tied the knot with her hubby, Mark Bolton, in 2013, and is currently expecting her first child, due in November 2015. “My husband and I are thrilled,” Richards told PEOPLE in June. “This is really a wonderful moment for us. It’s super exciting.”
According to PEOPLE, over the years Richards shifted from acting to painting, which is now her main professional focus. “I love to work with people in the art and express their story on canvas and my impression of them and what they want to express and use oils, brushes, canvas to create something that will last the generation,” she revealed. Now reportedly in South America for her art tour, Richards says she’s living a “much quieter” but “still very rich” life compared to her days in the glitz and glamor of Hollywood. “My life story these days, I still experience the red carpet as an artist,” she said. “But on a day-to-day basis I live kind of a country life.”
According to a 2011 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Richards sent Spielberg a watercolor self portrait of herself that was inspired by one of the scenes in Jurassic Park, which now hangs in Spielberg’s office. For his part, Spielberg is a pretty good gift-giver, too. “He never fails to send me something around Christmas,” Richards said. “When he finds people he likes, he’s really good at keeping in touch.” And here we thought we couldn’t love Spielberg more than we do already.
Richards’ movie career pretty much began and ended with the Jurassic Park franchise. She last appeared in a movie in the 1997 sequel, The Lost World. Subsequent acting gigs were on an incredibly smaller scale; TV movies like Broken Silence: A Moment of Truth Movie (1998) and Tremors 3: Back to Perfection (2001) are among the titles. No, we’ve never heard of them either.
Also in her interview with The Wall Street Journal, Richards—who graduated from Skidmore college in 2011—admitted she hasn’t altogether ruled out a return to acting. “Sometimes I’m on the the pulse of what’s happening in Hollywood,” she said, “but other times, I’m just totally absorbed by what I’m creating on the easel.” Adding to PEOPLE, she said: “If some great role or project finds me, absolutely that could be a nice thing to do, for sure.” Here’s hoping she paid attention to Jurassic World’s record-breaking box office returns…
In 2011, GK Films acquired the movie rights to Tomb Raider, with the plans of rebooting the iconic video game franchise on the big screen. Several years later, things have finally come together: fans are getting a new Tomb Raider movie come 2018. Here’s what we know about the reboot so far.
Several women have voiced Lara Croft in the various video games, but the only woman to play her on the big screen was Angelina Jolie in the early 2000s. Many actresses in Hollywood were after the iconic role, and Warner Bros. wanted to make sure it got the right person for the job. After reportedly meeting with several actresses, including Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley, the studio settled on Alicia Vikander. Judging from these set photos from last week, it looks like Vikander is doing just fine so far.
Once it cast the leading role, the studio began looking into the supporting cast, which includes Dominic West as Lara’s father (Lord Richard Croft), Daniel Wu as ship captain Lu Ren, and Walton Goggins as villain Father Mathias Vogel. Not much is known about the film, except for its basic premise. However, Goggins had a few words to say about his unconventional antagonist.
“[Like other characters] I have been so lucky to have the opportunity to play over the course of my career, there are real reasons behind his antagonism, and it’s not what you’d expect. He is very complicated, and his motivations are pure,” Goggins told Yahoo. Talking to Collider, Goggins added that his character is “confused, angry, and desperate.”
Rounding out the crew is Norwegian director Roar Uthaug, whose 2015 disaster film The Wave put him on the map when Norway submitted it as its official entry for the 88th Academy Awards’ best foreign language film. Unfortunately, it didn’t make the cut. Uthaug is helming the project based on a script from industry newcomer Geneva Robertson-Dworet, with MGM and GK Films partnering to produce the films.
An origin story to define the franchise
After years of waiting, fans finally got their hands on a new Tomb Raider game in 2013, thanks to the folks at Crystal Dynamics, who rebooted the franchise with a franchise-defining origin story. Now, Warner Bros., whose interactive entertainment arm co-published the game’s sequel, wants to do the same for the franchise on the movie side. And to do that, it’s basing the upcoming reboot on the video game’s story. After all, Tomb Raider is a video game franchise at heart.
“They told me they were doing the film based on the reboot of the game from 2013,” Vikander told Uproxx. “That is more of an origin story. You get into an emotional aspect of getting to know Lara hopefully in an in-depth way.” With the reboot following the basic premise of the video game reboot, the question arises: will the movie’s sequel, should it happen, be based on the story of the game’s sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider? Let’s hope there are at least a few twists we don’t see coming.
A psychological adventure to mess with your head
We know that the movie will take inspiration from Crystal Dynamics’ video game reboot, but what kind of film will it be? According to Walton Goggins, the story is like “Raiders of the Lost Ark meets a genre version of the Joseph Conrad novel Victory: An Island Tale.” Once he read the script, he said “jumped at the chance” of doing it.
Although there have been countless adventure movies over the years, the film to beat these days is Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first Indiana Jones movie. It’s the prototypical treasure-adventure flick. It’s one of those movies that inspires a multitude of directors, including Roar Uthaug, to join the filmmaking industry. Uthaug expressed to IGN his desire to make an adventure movie like Indiana Jones, which is one of the reasons he signed on as director. “I think we’ll want to make it feel like a modern action movie and to make what’s going on feel like it’s going on for real,” Uthaug said.
If you aren’t familiar with the novel Goggins mentioned, Victory: An Island Tale is a 1915 psychological tale about a man who ends up living on an island in what is now Indonesia due to a business mishap. Though complex, the story deals with the effects of isolation (especially on an island) and how that can blur the lines between what is civilized and what is barbaric. Since Tomb Raider deals with someone being stranded on an island, perhaps we’ll see how Lara Croft breaks through her misfortunes.
A different kind of Lara Croft
Those who don’t play the Tomb Raider video games may not be well-versed in Lara Croft’s history–her characteristics, her background, or her the reason she does what she does. She’s an iconic video game character, but is she someone people can aspire to be (other than the abandonment on a remote island bit)? That hasn’t been explored on screen before, which is something Roar Uthaug is looking to change.
“I think making Lara Croft feel like a real human being, that’s definitely something we want to bring to the big screen as well,” Uthaug told IGN. “I think we’ll want to make people relate to Lara as a character.”
It’s no secret that the video game industry tends to oversexualize its female characters, a trend that arguably began with the first Tomb Raider game over 20 years ago. Critics can’t seem to agree on whether Lara is a positive or negative female role model for young girls (and gamers). Sure, she’s a strong character who relies heavily on her wits to survive extraordinary situations, and that is what drew Uthaug to the project in the first place.
“I’ve always been a fan of strong female characters,” Uthaug added, “and I think I’ve had strong female characters in all my previous movies.” Perhaps the new reboot will purge the belief that Lara might be a “cyberbimbo” and restore her image as a strong female human character.
Potential shared universe?
Shared universes are all the rage in Hollywood these days. Thanks to the overwhelming success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, everyone’s getting in on the trend–Warner Bros. with its DC Extended Universe and MonsterVerse (Godzilla, King Kong, etc.), as well as Universal with the plainly and cyclically named Universal’s Monsters Universe. If producer Adrian Askarieh had his way, there would be a shared universe consisting of Tomb Raider, Hitman, Deus Ex, Thief, and Just Cause–all Square Enix-published video games that have film adaptations already released or in development.
He said he would put Just Cause, Hitman, and Tomb Raider in the present time frame of the universe. “Deus Ex would be the future of that universe and Thief would be the past,” Askarieh told IGN. “Unfortunately, I don’t have Lara Croft, and [Hitman: Agent 47] needs to be a big hit for that to happen.” Unfortunately, Hitman: Agent 47 scored an abysmal 8 percent critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Another problem is that the movie rights for most of those properties have been sold to multiple Hollywood studios, not just one. And if watching the MCU pass right by all those years of X-Men movies taught us anything, it’s that it’s hard to make crossovers happen under these circumstances. for now how difficult it can be for stories to cross over when the characters exist with different studios (see: X-Men and MCU). But hey, Spider-Man made it in, so maybe there’s a chance.
The release date is right around the corner
Tomb Raider began filming on January 23, 2017, right on schedule for the film to meet its March 16, 2018, release date. Upcoming superhero movie The Flash was previously slated for a March 2018 release date, but The Flash’s numerous production delays and director changes have made that unlikely. And it’s good for Warner Bros., which is distributing both The Flash and Tomb Raider–and dropping them too close to each other would hurt both films. So we get Tomb Raider first, and we even get it in IMAX.
4J Studios has rolled out Minecraft PS4 1.45 update and the 1.44 patch for PS3 and PlayStation Vita today, bringing a host of changes to the virtual-building game.
For PS4, the update brings a new Glide mini-game as well as a Glide mini game Lobby, as well as leaderboards and 16-player support.
Check out the patch notes:
PS3:
• Added Glide Mini Game! • Added new Mini Game Lobby. • Fix for MCCE-3984 – Enderdragon is able to use an End Gateway. • Fix for save corruption when exiting a newly created world. • Fix for MCCE #4108 – Skeleton Hitboxes were blocking the placement of blocks directly above them. • Fix for MCCE #4238 – Stained Glass Pane on the ground does not appear transparent. • Fix for MCCE-4226 – Wrong LOD showing for non-block item icons in the UI. • Fix for MCCE 4227 – Nether portals sending players to the wrong portals. • Fix for MCCE: 4321 – Player may fall through the block below them when jumping in a confined space e.g small tunnel.
PS4:
• Added Glide Mini Game! • Added new Mini Game Lobby. • Fix for MCCE-3984 – Enderdragon is able to use an End Gateway. • Added Leaderboards for Glide Mini Game. • Added support for up to 16 players in Battle and Glide.
Vita:
• Added Glide Mini Game! • Added new Mini Game Lobby. • Fix for MCCE-3984 – Enderdragon is able to use an End Gateway • Fix for crash when downloading PS3 save. • Fix for MCCE #4108 – Skeleton Hitboxes were blocking the placement of blocks directly above them. • Fix for MCCE #4238 – Stained Glass Pane on the ground does not appear transparent. • Fix for MCCE-4226 – Wrong LOD showing for non-block item icons in the UI. • Fix for MCCE 4227 – Nether portals sending players to the wrong portals. • Fix for MCCE: 4321 – Player may fall through the block below them when jumping in a confined space e.g small tunnel.
Here’s some details about the Glide mini-game.
“Strap on a pair of elytra and hone your swooping skills on an exhilarating aerial track – the first in a series of free tracks to be released.
Beat the clock in the Time Attack mode, using thermal drafts and speed boosters to your advantage, or go for points in Score Attack by hitting all the hoops. Careful study may reveal sneaky shortcuts to refine your runs, so keep your eyes peeled! You can choose to beat your personal best in solo play, pit your wing-skills against other players online, or – on Xbox One and PS4 – take a swing at the all new Glide leaderboards. This update also boosts the number of PS4 and Xbox One players possible in both Glide and Battle up to 16, and all platforms get a more spacious lobby, too!”
Mojang has announced the next update for Minecraft‘s Windows 10 and mobile versions. Update 1.1, which is also known as The Discovery Update, is focused around things to uncover.
“There are many mysterious and wondrous things to uncover,” Mojang said in a blog post. “Barter with a cartographer for a treasure map, sling your supplies into a llama’s pack (or into a shulker box) and embark on an epic quest to locate the dank and dangerous forest mansion.”
The Discovery Update also introduces new Enchantments, including Frostwalking (lets you walk on water) and Mending (keeps your sword sharp). Mojang also confirmed that if you defeat the monsters within the mansion mentioned above, you’ll receive the “Totem of Undying” that keeps you alive when you should otherwise have perished.
Additionally, the update adds new features such as the ability to dye your bed a new color or build with new glazed terracotta and concrete blocks. The update also lets you change the movement properties of mobs, if that’s what you want to do.
Finally, Mojang teased that this is “just the start” for new features in The Discovery Update. More details will be announced in the coming weeks.
The Discovery Update will be available on Android for testers “in the near future.” It’s also coming to iOS and Windows 10, though there is no word yet on consoles.
Llamas, shulkers and more! Android beta coming soon!
What could follow The End? The Epilogue Update? The Appendix Update? The Bit Where We Thank Our Cat Update? No! These things would imply that our work on Minecraft is coming to a close. It couldn’t be farther from the truth! (Although we are eternally thankful to our cat. You complete me, Mr. Mittens.)
In fact, there’s loads and loads more coming in 1.1, aka The Discovery Update! Android users can get a taste of what’s on its way with the beta that we are opening up for testing in the near future. We’re not ready to open the beta up quite yet, but as soon as we are we’ll let you know! Promise!
It’s not called The Discovery Update for no reason: there are many mysterious and wondrous things to uncover. Barter with a cartographer for a treasure map, sling your supplies into a llama’s pack (or into a shulker box) and embark on an epic quest to locate the dank and dangerous forest mansion! Does your route take you across an impassable river? The Enchantment of Frostwalking will solve that problem! Meanwhile, the Enchantment of Mending will keep your swordblade sharp no matter how many mobs you slay along the way. Defeat the sinister illagers who lurk within the mansion and make off with their precious loot – the Totem of Undying – and cheat death as you throw yourself into further peril!
Crafters looking for a more sedate pace of discovery will be pleased to hear you can now dye beds, smelt ingots, and build with the fancypants new blocks: glazed terracotta and concrete. And those with an even more experimental inclination, will find the expansion of Add-Ons to their liking: you’ll now be able to remix mobs’ movement properties!
And these things are just the start – we’ll be revealing even more of the Discovery Update’s secrets in the coming weeks!
