Posted by: xSicKxBot - 01-05-2020, 07:09 PM - Forum: Windows
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CES 2020: Lenovo powers up new gaming devices, monitors
At CES, Lenovo continued revealing its releases with gaming laptops, an eGPU and monitors.
The new Lenovo Legion Y740S is Lenovo’s thinnest and lightest gaming laptop yet with up to eight hours of battery life [1]. It’s got up to 10th Gen Intel Core i9 processors (coming soon) reaching more than 5 GHz and Q-Control, with which users can shift gears with a simple press of their Fn+Q keys. Jump into Performance Mode for higher frame rates, down-shift into Quiet Mode for better battery life to watch a movie or stay the course in Balance Mode for day-to-day usage. Made with long-term gaming usage in mind, enjoy the new tactile feel of the Lenovo Legion keyboards, featuring quick response time with 100% anti-ghosting, improved ergonomic key size and responsive switches designed for smoother typing and gameplay. An anti-oil and abrasion-resistant coating amps device durability compared to previous generations.
With a display up to 600 nits bright and VESA certified with Dolby Vision, it has a 60 Hz refresh rate so washed out images are a thing of the past. The vivid picture quality is matched with up to 32GB DDR4 of memory, 1TB PCIe SSD [2] storage capacity and a thermal design with five-point sensor array and quad fan for four times the cooling when playing graphically intensive titles. Play action-packed multiplayer online battle arena games at the perfect angle with a new flexible 180-degree hinge. It starts at $1099.99 as a configure-to-order (CTO) offering.
Players can add to the power of the Y740S with the Lenovo Legion BoostStation. It serves as the gaming hub or performance box eGPU that fits on virtually any playing surface at just under 20lbs (9.07kg). Mixed-reality features (augmented or virtual reality) are supported with applicable specifications via the eGPU. It starts at $249.99 as a standalone accessory or option to bundle a NVIDIA GeForce RTX2060 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT GPU.
Both are expected to be available starting in May 2020.
Stay focused on the game with the new Lenovo Legion Y25-25 Gaming Monitor with a 24.5-inch, Full HD IPS panel display built into the near-edgeless chassis. Crank up refresh rates all the way to 240Hz—more FPS means that more data flows between the GPU and monitor, helping to eliminate tearing in most multiplayer games. It comes with anti-glare panel and up to 400 nits of brightness and is TÜV Rheinland Eye Comfort Certified to reduce eye strain. Its ergonomic stand enables a myriad of comfortable playing angles including tilt, lift, pivot and swivel; the VESA mount allows for on-wall display.
It will start at $319.99 and is expected to be available in June 2020.
Curved monitors make gaming more immersive and comfortable, as the curve simulates a more natural viewing experience for your eyes, neck and head—allowing the gamer to see all the action at once.
The new 31.5-inch Lenovo G32qc Gaming Monitor has near-edgeless bezel QHD (2560 x 1440) screen resolution for clear visuals and superior picture quality. Catch every player movement with its wide viewing angle, high-screen brightness and excellent contrast ratio. It’ll start at $319.99 and is expected to be available in March 2020.
Or, choose the heavy-duty yet compact 27-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution display on the Lenovo G27c Gaming Monitor—both monitors have a curvature of 1500R for complete game immersion. The latter is engineered to deliver virtually tear-free and stutter-free gameplay and is capable of an amazingly high refresh rate of up to 165Hz, helping to rid gaming distractions such as choppy images, streaks and motion blur. It will start at $219.99 and is expected to be available in March 2020.
While the Lenovo G32qc Gaming Monitor offers a speedy 144Hz refresh rate, both monitors give users a high-speed 4ms response time for ultimate clarity and to help eliminate ghosting. Both curved gaming monitors are TÜV Rheinland Low Blue Light and Flicker Free Certified to help protect gamers’ eyesight during those uninterrupted sessions. They’re available with adjustable stands for ergonomic positioning, as well as a VESA mount for users who prefer to affix their displays to the wall. Easy access to HDMI, DisplayPort and audio out makes for seamless connectivity to gaming rigs for a better user experience.
Find out more about these and other gaming accessories at Lenovo.
[1] With 60Whr battery and 95W power adapter. All battery life claims are approximate and based on test results using the MobileMark 2014 ver 1.5 battery life benchmark test. Actual results will vary and depend on numerous factors including product configuration and usage, software, operating conditions, wireless functionality, power management settings, screen brightness and other factors. The maximum capacity of the battery will naturally decrease with time and usage. See https://bapco.com/products/mobilemark-2014/ for additional details.
[2] Actual available capacity is less and varies due to many factors, including formatting, partitioning and operating system, etc. which utilize part of this capacity. The available capacity may change with software updates.
Feature: Feral Interactive On The Pleasures And Pitfalls Of Porting To Switch
Against all the odds, Nintendo Switch has hosted some stunning third-party ports since launching back in 2017. Disproving the idea that third-parties and Nintendo platforms don’t mix well, Switch has attracted some truly excellent (and unexpected) games that manage to squeeze performance from the console’s modest mobile chipset that few believed was possible. Where there’s a will there’s a way, it seems, and a handful of porting houses have worked wonders on Nintendo’s hybrid handheld.
One of those developers is Feral Interactive, the studio responsible for bringing both GRID Autosport and Alien: Isolation to Switch. Both games are masterclasses in porting to the console and, incredibly, they represent the first two games the developer has brought to any dedicated home console since the London-based company was founded in 1996.
“Feral began with the aim of bringing AAA games to the Macintosh platform and we built up a lot of experience doing just that,” says Edwin Smith, Feral Interactive’s Head of Design. “Over the last several years we have extended our activities to include Linux, iOS, Android and most recently Switch. We started working with Switch because it seemed capable of handling some of the games that we had brought to other platforms.”
Given Feral’s history of quality port work on other platforms, it’s unsurprising that the end results on Nintendo’s console have been impressive. While there are benefits to working on a specific device, each one has its specific drawbacks, too. “Having a single piece of hardware to target simplifies the development and QA tasks, all other things being equal,” Smith explains. “Having said that, all other things are rarely equal…the Switch CPU is not as powerful as most recent mobile handsets so you have to eke out of it all the performance you can and that means lots of performance analysis and optimisation, and that takes time and effort.”
When it comes to the two Switch games the company has worked on so far, it’s clear that that time and effort has been well spent. Feral is not alone in producing stunning work on Switch, but for every incredible port there’s another bare-bones or sloppy effort which only sets apart the quality examples further. With GRID on Switch the team went out of its way to provide players with graphical options to tailor the experience to their individual tastes, providing three distinct visual modes enabling the player to choose between graphical loveliness at 30 frames-per-second, smooth performance at 60fps or a handheld-only energy-saving mode to make Switch’s battery last longer. A free HD texture pack for the cars was also made available as a separate download, giving players even more choice over how much space the digital-only release takes up on their console.
There are a number of factors in [evaluating a potential port], not least our enthusiasm for the game as a game.
While it’s tempting to see these port houses like M2, Saber Interactive and the like as tech ‘wizards’, the reality often comes down to simple hard graft and time. “The elapsed time for each [game] was less than a year,” Smith reveals, “but in terms of man months we’ve had different teams working on different problems so it’s hard to give an accurate figure. Getting the games up and running was relatively straightforward. However we spent a lot of time tuning visual effects, controls and performance hotspots.”
Interestingly, it seems both Alien: Isolation and GRID came about more organically than you might expect, with neither being the result of a specific pitch from either Feral or the games’ respective developers/owners. “We are lucky to have long-standing relationships with both SEGA and Codemasters. A decision to bring a particular game to a particular platform tends to come out of our continuing conversations with our partners rather than a discrete event such as a pitch.”
Feral has partnerships with some of gaming’s biggest names – Square Enix, 2K and SEGA to name just a few – and while it maintains a dialogue with all partners throughout development, the team finds it most productive to keep contact to a relative minimum. “There is always regular contact with partners throughout a project that includes a range of companies, licensors, card vendors, platform holders, etc, The frequency of interaction and intensity of information flow varies by project and stage of the project. The ideal scenario is enough exchange of information, but no more to get the project done in a timely way at a quality with which everyone is happy.”
Of course, the notion of bringing a game – any game – to Switch is easy enough to dream up, but that’s just the start of a process. Potential projects undergo an evaluation which includes, perhaps surprisingly, whether the team actually likes and enjoys the game in question. “There are a number of factors in that process, not least our enthusiasm for the game as a game. But also, technical feasibility, sales potential, platform suitability, code quality, etc. If we are unable to port a game to the level of quality we wish to achieve, then we do not proceed, and occasionally that has happened. You see quite a few ports, which have dropped a number of features from the original game or else are released to run on a limited range of the latest hardware. We think that is self-defeating in that it generates disappointment rather than enjoyment.”
Some [players] don’t immediately understand the implications of an [in-depth Digital Foundry-style technical] analysis, but people are smart, if they are interested they figure it out, and it’s good to have knowledgeable customers.
On the subject of missing features, anybody who played GRID on Switch at launch will have noticed that the multiplayer mode wasn’t included to begin with. The local and splitscreen components instead arrived in December and online multiplayer is scheduled for later this year. “We wanted to manage the development risks,” Smith elaborates. “Part of that was to separate some of the major ones and so stage development and release. The initial aim was to make the best possible single player racing experience on Switch in a given time frame. If we achieved that, we felt that we would be in a good position to offer additional functionality via patches.”
Breaking development up in this manner might seem risky if the initial offering fails to sell sufficiently well, but by splitting multiplayer modes off and patching them in later the team has been able to give each aspect of the port the attention it deserves. “Similarly by first offering local multiplayer and splitscreen we have been able to focus on the multiplayer experience per se without having to worry about all the online issues that need to be solved.”
Whatever your opinion on this compartmentalised, staggered method of development, it has worked very well for Feral and the results speak for themselves. In the case of Alien: Isolation, Digital Foundry has argued that the Switch version actually looks better than its counterparts on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. While this praise must be encouraging to the team, knowing that the work will be analysed in such forensic detail, with side-by-side comparisons drawing attention to any minor inconsistency, must put additional pressure on the developers.
“It does add pressure,” Smith confirms, “but in a good cause. Reviewers such as Digital Foundry set a standard by which developers know their efforts will be judged, and setting the bar high is good for everyone, players, platform holders and developers. It is true that some don’t immediately understand the implications of an analysis, but people are smart, if they are interested they figure it out, and it’s good to have knowledgeable customers.”
We have had a blast working on GRID Autosport and Alien Isolation. We are confident that they won’t be the last games we bring to Switch
Of course, it’s impossible to please everyone. A small number of players noted input latency while playing the Switch version of Alien: Isolation and Feral responded saying this was partly the result of triple buffering and will remain present as part of a development ‘trade-off’. “Every game has some form of latency,” Smith explains, “as any input from the player has to do several things before any correlate appears on screen: the player presses a button on the controller; the Controller reports the input to the main device; the device reports the movement to the game; the input is processed by the game; the GPU draws the frame; the frame is rendered to the screen. Every step of this process incurs a small delay. Some players are very sensitive to these delays, but the majority of people don’t perceive them.”
“The trade-off here was between incurring a little extra input latency perceived by a very small faction of players versus displaying screen tearing, which would be seen by everyone. We chose the path, which affected the fewest players.” Given the inevitable compromises required when porting games effectively, it’s hard to argue Feral didn’t make the right choice here. Personally, we find screen tearing interminably distracting but everyone will have their own preferences.
With more powerful hardware, fewer compromises are necessary. A potential ‘Switch Pro’ would expand the possibilities for everyone, although Smith mentions a more surprising area he’d like to see improved with new hardware. “We assume the next version of the Switch will have more computing power, but less obviously support for analogue triggers on the joy-cons would be very welcome for racing games.” Indeed, Feral went so far as to include GameCube controller support in GRID Autosport, just another example of the studio going above and beyond in search of the best possible gaming experience on Switch. This year’s update will see Labo controller support added, too.
With Sega/Creative Assembly and Codemasters seemingly pleased with the team’s efforts (“They seem very happy”) and Nintendo itself being “a pleasure to work with, responsive, helpful and supportive”, we’re certain we haven’t seen the last of Feral Interactive on Switch. Smith is enthusiastic about the console and the studio’s work on it. “We have had a blast working on GRID Autosport and Alien Isolation. We are confident that they won’t be the last games we bring to Switch, but we will all have to wait and see.”
Whatever the future holds for Switch and third-party ports, Feral Interactive’s involvement will be a sure sign that potential future releases are worthy of investigation. ‘Port-begging’ might have become a dirty word, but with games like Witcher 3, GRID Autosport and Alien: Isolation showing just what’s possible on Switch, it’s hard not to imagine what could be with the right people on the job.
Many thanks to Edwin for his time, and to Timur at Feral for helping set up this interview.
The 10 Best-Selling Physical Video Games Of The Past Decade Within The UK
Yesterday, physical games sales data for the UK revealed the best-selling titles of 2019. To nobody’s surprise, FIFA 20 took out the number one spot, with a total of 1.5 million sales. Nintendo also had a reasonably good year in this part of the world, with both Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Pokémon Sword (not including PokémonShield sales) making the cut.
Despite a strong year for Nintendo titles, no first-party games from the Japanese company have performed well-enough sales-wise to earn a spot in the UK’s top 10 best-selling physical games of the past decade. As you might have already noticed at this point, the game that did take out first was Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V, followed by Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops and in third place was Minecraft, which has at least been released on multiple Nintendo platforms.
The rest of the list is comprised of two other COD games and EA’s FIFA series takes up five spots on the chart. That’s FIFA 14 in fifth, FIFA 13 in sixth, FIFA 15 in seventh, FIFA 11 in ninth and FIFA 12 in tenth place. Unfortunately, sales figures were not provided by the GfK.
1.
Grand Theft Auto V
2.
Call of Duty: Black Ops
3.
Minecraft
4.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
5.
Fifa 14
6.
Fifa 13
7.
Fifa 15
8.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II
9.
Fifa 11
10.
Fifa 12
As already noted here, FIFA 20 was the best-selling video game in 2019 within the UK. Clearly there are no signs of its popularity slowing down anytime soon, even after all the uproar last year about microtransactions and loot boxes.
Are you at all surprised by this list? Did you expect any Nintendo exclusives to make the cut? Share your thoughts below.
Warframe Takes Co-Op Space Combat to Next Level with Empyrean
Since July 2018, our development team has talked about giving Warframe players something different than the tried-and-true procedurally generated corridor shooters and open-world expansions they have become used to. They have wanted to expand Warframe’s gameplay into real-time, ship-to-ship space combat.
With
that first Railjack demo shown at TennoCon one-and-a-half years ago,
they turned a wild, nearly impossible dream they once had with our original
third-person action-adventure, Dark Sector, into a reality. Empyrean,
available now on Xbox One, is just that. Warframe players now have the
keys to a powerful battleship and dares them to fly into fast-paced, all-out
battleship combat.
Starting
with three gorgeous new space environments, Earth, Saturn, and Veil Proxima, Warframe
players must build a Dry Dock and the Railjack battleship, rally together their
clan, and launch into the wild unknown of deep space. In these all new
tilesets, Tenno (players’ names in game) will crash head-on into hostile
Grineer forces in next-level, team-oriented cooperative play.
This
first stage of Empyrean is designed as a real, honest-to-goodness
cooperative experience. Solo players will still
be able to enjoy Empyrean, but the difficulty and progression is
balanced around two-, three-, and four-player crews. Come 2020, we’ll bring
enhanced solo capabilities and even more surprises!
Starting
today, Empyrean will be an intense rush for both new and veteran Xbox
One players. By shooting waves of opponent Fighters and Crewships from the
pilot seat or gunner positions, we hope to capture some of those early
Millenium Falcon moments from “Star Wars: A New Hope.” You might just
reflexively yell to your teammates, “Don’t get cocky kid!”
Blasting like a bullet from the Archwing Cannon into enemy vessels to commandeer or destroy their ships might feel a touch like our version of those powerful action scenes from “Captain Marvel.”
Before and during each fight, players will experience Empyrean’s new on-board ship systems. Starting with simple Railjack aesthetics like giving your ship a name, selecting colors or skins, and moving on to constructing weapons, armor and actual ship powers, players will uncover deep, rich systems designed to fulfill their space ninja — and now, space pirate — power fantasies.
All
of this, while working together to take down enemy ships, putting out fires,
welding holes in the hull, boarding enemy craft, being boarded by enemy craft,
and more, create a unique urgency and gameplay tension totally new to Warframe.
Over the holidays with family and friends around, there is nothing quite like a great cooperative experience, so we think you’re going to love Empyrean. So, give it a shot. Warframe is free and available now on Xbox One via the Microsoft Store. And don’t forget to visit our forums to start a conversation and let us know what you think!
Hardsuit Labs is currently looking for a technical artist specializing in VFX to join the Bloodlines 2 team. With a unique combination of artistic and technical expertise, the person who fills this position will be the bridge between our artists and engineers. Technical Artists at Hardsuit Labs are comfortable authoring surface and particle based materials as well as full-screen post-processing effects. On a daily basis, Technical Artists use creative thinking skills to resolve technical challenges and limitations while keeping in line with the art style and design pillars of the project. They show an interest and aptitude for solving problems that affect multiple interdisciplinary teams and stakeholders.
You
You have a well-developed creative background, understanding of core design principles, and sensitivity to dealing with creative issues within technical constraints. You’ll employ your expert-level knowledge of 3D tools and problem-solving skills to build tools, maintain pipelines, and provide technical support for other artists. Ensuring that art assets can be easily integrated into the game without sacrificing the overall artistic vision or exceeding the technical limits of the chosen platform will be your number one priority. Teamwork is key at Hardsuit Labs and you must love working in a team fostered environment.
Basic Qualifications
Excellent troubleshooting and debugging skills are an absolute must.
Experience shipping games on multiple platforms.
Minimum 3 years of professional game development experience, including UE4 in-engine experience
Expert knowledge of modern PBR-based shader authoring. HLSL, Cg, advanced Node-based UE4 materials or similar experience will be considered.
Experience using Houdini, Houdini Engine, or similar software to build procedural game-centric content.
Proficiency with modern DCC suites such as 3DS Max or Maya preferred. Expertise in other 3D software packages will be considered. Photoshop required.
Ability to ensure levels and other content are meeting memory budgets and performance targets.
Passion for making and playing great games, with an awareness of current titles and industry trends.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience with level management and optimization on a console project.
Strong knowledge of modern game environment art principles and techniques.
Ability to troubleshoot and fix complex workflow issues in artist software, version control systems, and game engines.
Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.
Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.
GDC welcomes new talk on how side projects help with game dev burnout
Overwork and burnout are real threats to happiness, especially in the field of game development, where demand for big, beautiful virtual worlds often sees passionate devs working late nights and weekends.
That’s why Game Developers Conference officials are excited to confirm that veteran game developer Laralyn McWilliams will return to GDC 2020 in March to deliver an important Advocacy track talk about how you can battle burnout by cultivating a healthy, creative ritual around a side project.
In “Battling Burnout: The Side Project Ritual” McWilliams aims to give you a guided tour through the many benefits of creative rituals, especially around side projects. Yes, you can build skills or even kickstart your indie career, but more important, side projects can be refreshing, rebooting, and restorative. Even if you whittle away at your side project for years–even if you never release it–the act of ritual creation is part of the evergreen path to both confidence and healing.
So come out to GDC 2020 to discover how the ritual of solo game development can be a part of your own restorative process, and help you win the battle against burnout!
Next year GDC 2020 runs from Monday, March 16th through Friday, March 20th. This will be the 34th edition of GDC, and now that registration is officially open, you’ll want to take a look at the (ever-expanding) session schedule and your GDC pass options — register early to lock in the best price!
Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (January 4th)
Maybe a bit of Ring Fit Adventure to reverse all that holiday binging?
Not only has another week passed us by, but an entire year has been and gone quicker than a Toad with a Golden Mushroom. We’ve been celebrating in style with a look back at Nintendo’s 2019 – and Nintendo’s whole decade – as well as all sorts of Game of the Year and Game of the Decade discussions, but now it’s time to get back to our regular game sessions.
Members of the Nintendo Life team have jotted down their weekend gaming plans below, and we’d love for you to get involved too via the poll and comment sections. Enjoy!
Gavin Lane, staff writer
I hit the sales over the holidays and found myself with a half-dozen new games. Incredibly, I managed to play and actually complete Ape Out in a fun couple of hours (hurray!), so only five more to go. I started Dead Cells a few nights ago and it had me hooked, so I’m jonesing to get back to that.
The first week of a new year. My body and mind are swollen and slow, the result of a two week Xmas diet of port, ham and very smelly cheese. And yet somehow I struggle on, there are games that must be played and no amount of newly gained Xmas beef is going to stop me.
This weekend I’ll be jumping properly into Pokémon Sword for the first time, helping my son fill up that Pokédex and Dynamaxing my brains out. I’ve also given into temptation in the wake of the excellent TV series and picked up The Witcher 3, which is nothing short of a miracle in handheld mode. Here’s to a New Year, a new decade and the hope that my gym membership doesn’t expire before I manage to right the many, many wrongs I’ve done to myself this holiday season.
Ryan Craddock, staff writer
I’ve finally got around to starting Luigi’s Mansion 3 and thank goodness I did. After a slightly slow start, the game’s really coming into its own and I’m loving exploring every last nook and cranny of each of the hotel’s floors as I progress.
The game’s reminding me of the original Luigi’s Mansion on GameCube, which is exactly what I was hoping for. I played a bit of Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon on 3DS but I didn’t enjoy as much as the first game – luckily, this one seems to have brought back the general feel that I loved from that first entry. So, to answer the question, I’ll be playing more of Luigi’s Mansion 3.
Gonçalo Lopes, contributing writer
I cleared a bunch of backlog of shame games during the holidays but none of them were DAEMON X MACHINA or Astral Chain so here we go again! I haven’t mentioned before but today is my 79th consecutive day of Ring Fit Adventure so my arms and shoulders have become lethal weapons and I even have a sort of six-pack situation going on.
But now I will also begin sharpening my brain with Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training on the Switch, a title I played for well over two years back on DS before upgrading to a 3DS. The surprise arrival of Ultracore yesterday and my continued exploration of SD Gundam G Generation Cross Rays rounds up this weekend efforts.
My game of the week is the low poly world of Ashen. I waited a bit to read PJ’s review before committing into it and I’m well and truly hooked. Happy New Year, folks!
Austin Voigt, contributing writer
Lately, with all of the holiday vacation time, I have been on a completionist roll. I finished Zelda: Link’s Awakening and Pokémon Shield over the holidays, and I can’t give up on my backlog now! I’m determined to get through Luigi’s Mansion 3 this weekend, as well as a bunch of post-game missions in all of my games. I might also pick up Dragon Quest XI S now that it’s on sale (I’d only ever played the demo).
Feels good to finally complete everything – but it’s also a little bittersweet; I usually end up with these ridiculous backlogs because I hate when games end… but we undoubtedly have many more coming this spring, so I’d better get over it and keep moving.
Ollie Reynolds, reviewer
After a surprisingly very busy Christmas and New Year, I’ll be kicking back with one of my favourite pastimes at the moment: playing retro collections. Specifically, I’m very much getting back into the delightful Castlevania Anniversary Collection, which might have something to do with the new Dracula series on TV… Now, how about a GBA/DS collection, Konami?
Otherwise, I’ve started back on Animal Crossing: New Leaf in an effort to prep myself for the eventual release of New Horizons. I forgot just how darn relaxing and charming that game is, and I can’t wait for the next entry!
As always, thanks for reading! Make sure to leave a vote in the poll above and a comment below with your gaming choices over the next few days…
Luigi’s Mansion 3 Nominated For New York Best GOTY Award
Back in October last year, we found out the New York Videogame Critics Circle would honour Nintendo of America’s former president Reggie Fils-Aimé at the 9th annual New York Game Awards Ceremony. He’ll be receiving the Andrew Yoon Legend Award, confirming his ‘legend’ status.
Now, the games up for nomination have been revealed. The ceremony itself takes place at the SVA Theatre in New York City on 21st January. The Nintendo highlight is Luigi’s Mansion 3 being nominated for best game of the year. It’s up against titles such as The Outer Worlds, The Game Awards 2019 winner Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding and the indie hit, Disco Elysium.
There are a total of four Nintendo titles up for nomination in the kids category. These games include Tetris 99, Super Mario Maker 2, Pokémon Sword and Shield and Luigi’s Mansion 3. In the best-augmented reality and virtual reality category, the Labo VR kit is representing the Switch. On the indie front, Untitled Goose Game is in with a chance to win the best indie game award and Pokémon Sword and Shield has also received a nomination for best music.
With the 2010’s coming to a close, it’s a time to look back at the decade that was. This is exactly what Godot founder and lead developer Juan Linietsky just did over on the Godot Engine blog. Here on GameFromScratch.com we’ve been tracking the progress of the Godot game engine from the very beginning.
A quick recap of major events in the Godot game engine’s development history:
Godot 3.2 should release any day now, currently in late beta. If you are interested in experiencing the history of Godot first hand, you can download all the previous versions (except 1.0) right here.
For as long as Godot has been available, we have been creating Godot tutorials here on GameFromScratch, as well as over on DevGa.me. The original Godot 1/2 tutorial series is available here while a more up to date Godot 3.x tutorial series is available here.
Learn more about the history and development of the Godot engine in the video below.
As Apple’s largest ever new service launch, Apple TV+ has brought us a strong stable of good shows. It just hasn’t had that all-important breakout hit yet —but that could be about to change.
Apple TV+ being promoted at an Apple Store
You can’t say that Apple TV+ started quietly. Except that after Apple spent most of the year hyping it up, the service ultimately launched with just a few shows —and they haven’t been gigantic successes.
That’s not to say that the shows are poor, or that they haven’t been recognized by the likes of the Golden Globes or the Screen Actors Guild.
Out of the whole slate of series that Apple TV+ has rolled out in its first two months, though, none of them have yet become breakout hits. None of them have crossed that line into being talked about in mainstream media.
Dickinson
This is because, in most ways, it’s one thing to have a good series like “Dickinson.” It’s another to have one that is watched by a lot of people. And it’s yet another to have a show that breaks out into being part of the culture. In other words, there is no Baby Yoda on Apple TV+ yet.
Those breakout hits did happen more often when there were just ABC, CBS and NBC to watch. And it’s incredibly rare now that we instead have hundreds of places to see TV.
Only, if you can’t manufacture a cultural icon, and if you can only try to persuade enough people to watch your show, both of these things do depend on the series being good. And here, Apple is doing well.
Apple TV+ has plenty of good series
Compare it to any broadcast network’s September season, ever, and it’s actually quite remarkable how consistently good Apple TV+ series are. The whole reason we all got so used to mid-season replacements every January was that so many September launches would fail.
The definition of a failure on network TV, though, is and always was entirely in the viewing figures, not at all in the quality of the series. Very good shows died on the air before they found their audience. It could be such a fast and ruthless process that producer Alan Spencer, creator of ABC’s “Sledge Hammer!,” once joked that his show was cancelled during its first ad break.
Now if the sheer volume of choices mean it’s harder to find an audience, Apple is not so frantically chasing ratings, it is not trying to win its hour slot against its rivals.
The Morning Show
Apple does know precisely how many people watch any given show, but it isn’t then trying to deliver that audience to advertisers. No one sets out to make a poor series, but if Apple TV+ has a dud, it does not have the same urgent reason to pull it after a couple of episodes and burn off the rest on late nights in the summer.
The odd poor series sitting in Apple TV+’s library isn’t going to cause a problem. A lot of poor series would. If all you ever saw when you turned on Apple TV+ was dud after dud, each bad show would be cumulatively damaging.
Whereas it only takes a single great show to make a service a success.
Previously on TV
We forget this now, but “House of Cards” was not just a very good Netflix series, it was an advertisement for the service. The success of that single show, the amount of buzz it created, lifted the whole of Netflix and helped get it noticed.
To a lesser degree, “Transparent” did the same for Amazon Prime.
This uplift from a single show is not limited to streaming services, either. HBO has been around since the early 1970s, but the reason you’ve heard of it is “The Larry Sanders Show” in the 1990s. You may not have seen that series, perhaps you don’t even know the name now, but what it did back then was ignite the cable service.
“The Larry Sanders Show” attracted viewers to the service, and the presence of viewers meant that HBO was then also attracting talent. Producers would already have known that HBO supported more interesting fare than network TV, and now they could see that there was an audience.
Apple has attracted talented creatives right from the start. You can be certain that Oprah’s phrase of “a billion pockets y’all,” or something similar, was said by Apple at every first meeting with every producer.
And you can be certain that every producer was already conscious of how much money Apple has.
No guarantees
The money, the audience, and the lack of adverts interrupting shows, all mean that the Apple TV+ service launched with very good people doing their best to make very good television.
It does not follow automatically that they succeed, but you don’t get a hit without trying.
That series is the closest Apple TV+ has to a hit, and it’s the only one to be nominated for any awards so far.
Everyone wants a hit
“The Morning Show” is not a breakout hit, though. It is getting mentioned on other TV talk shows, it is getting some news value from its awards and reviews. It’s just not yet making such a noise that “Entertainment Tonight” is desperate to feature exclusive news from the set.
For the moment, though, two months into the service, Apple TV+ feels like HBO in its early days. It has a reputation for high quality, but it hasn’t had its Larry Sanders or Baby Yoda moment.
Let’s not downplay that point about quality, though. Making television is unlike anything Apple has ever done before.
Since November 1, it’s brought us ten series across drama, comedy, children’s and Oprah’s Book Club. Assuming that Oprah Winfrey gets renewed, as her series surely must, then half of that slate is already coming back for a second run.
You can’t entirely trust that a show getting a second series got it through being a success. It can just be that the original deal was for more than one run.
Nonetheless, quantitatively it’s the sole metric we currently have or are even likely to get unless Apple decides to reveal its ratings.
Qualitatively, more visibly, and actually more surprisingly, none of the series so far have been complete duds.
And that’s what is going to get Apple success in television. Its shows are lacking buzz so far, but they’re not lacking in quality and we are already seeing how that has changed things.
AppleInsider sources in television long ago told us that Apple had been intent on signing exclusive deals with TV creators and, at launch, it had singularly failed to do that. Now, though, having seen how Apple TV+ works, and knowing from other creatives what is involved, it’s changing.
In late December, Apple signed comedy writer and star Sharon Horgan to a first-look deal. And around the same time, filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron similarly signed a multi-year movie deal with Apple.
Neither is as well known on screens as, say, the Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston partnership that produced “The Morning Show.”
But the shows and films they make are extraordinarily good, to the extent that both of these deals are true coups for Apple.
Apple TV+ just needs one great hit to get those billion people reaching into their pockets, and that first hit is going to come from attracting more and more talent to the service.
