Stuff Worth Knowing for the Week of October 3, 2022
CD Projekt Red announces five games, Google reveals its 2022 Pixel products, and Elon Musk decides to buy Twitter again.
Welcome to the second week of Stuff Worth Knowing! Each week, I'll round up news related to tech, video games, film, television, anime, and more. At the end of each newsletter, there will be a section called On The Calendar, which will include some of those notable dates that are near-term. Eventually, there will also be a separate newsletter called ChartChitChat, where I'll take a look at the various weekly charts, including the box office, Nielsen television charts, Netflix’s Top 10 charts, and the Steam charts.
Finally, I will be starting an adjoining Patreon very soon, which will include essays on various topics, the text of this newsletter, and eventually… YouTube content. (I'm moving right now. So I'm busy!) So if you want me from me than just the newsletter, you can subscribe there once that goes live.
Without further ado, let's get into the news.
Video Games 🎮
CD Projekt Red Announces Five New Witcher and Cyberpunk Games
Fresh off the revitalization of Cyberpunk 2077—thanks to a ton of patches and the success of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners on Netflix—CD Projekt Red opened the floodgates on their future projects. Game developers usually don't announce projects this far ahead of time because game development is tricky, but I guess CDPR is feeling confident. Or they want to ride the goodwill and assure investors that they have more irons in the fire.
To this end, the studio revealed a total of five different games, all planned for release within a six-year timeframe. The projects are:
Orion (Cyberpunk 2077) - This is the full sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, which will "take the Cyberpunk franchise further."
Polaris (The Witcher) - The next installment in The Witcher franchise, which is the game that CDPR had previously announced. This is also the beginning of a new Witcher trilogy.
Canis Majoris (The Witcher) - Another "full-fledged" Witcher game, but coming from an external studio of former Witcher developers.
Sirius (The Witcher) - A Witcher game coming from The Molasses Flood, a Boston-based studio. It'll have a single-player experience, but also offer multiplayer gameplay.
Hadar - This is an entirely new IP for the studio. It's not based on any existing brand and the studio is working on the foundation for the game's setting at the moment.
In the video, CD Projekt Red said that it was looking to have a "healthy and sustainable work environment," but one wonders how they're going to do that with five games in six years. Something that might help is the company switching to Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5 as the engine of choice, rather than trying to shift REDEngine to work with vastly-different games. Still, that's an ambitious time table for the studio, even after expansion.
Fandom Acquires GameSpot, GiantBomb, Metacritic, and More
Following last week's news that GAMURS Group has acquired a number of sites from Enthusiast Gaming, including Destructoid, Escapist Magazine, and Siliconera, we have another wholesale acquisition. Fandom has acquired a number of sites formerly owned by Red Ventures, including GameSpot, GiantBomb, Metacritic, GameFAQs, Comic Vine, TV Guide, Giant Bomb, and Cord Cutters News. This adds those sites to a portfolio that already includes ScreenJunkies, Fanatical, Curse Media, and the main Fandom website.
While the ongoing media consolidation is a big problem, I'm hearing from folks involved that the move is a positive one. Red Ventures was far more focused on its generalist websites like CNET, Healthline, and Bankrate. It increasingly didn't have the patience to give the entertainment-focused offerings the resources they needed. Fandom may have its problems, but at least it is aligned in the same direction as the sites being acquired.
Tencent is "Aggressively Seeking" Majority Stakes in More Companies
Currently, the games industry is on uneven waters because there are a number of companies that are throwing around money for talent and acquisitions. The companies involved include Microsoft, Sony, Embracer Group, Netease, and Tencent. The latter company, Chinese giant Tencent, has previously been content to buy up minority stakes in a number of publishers and developers, including Ubisoft and FromSoftware.
According to a new report by Reuters, Tencent is changing its strategy, moving to acquire majority stakes in major developers. Sources told Reuters that Tencent is looking toward European companies for future acquisitions. The company increased its stake in Ubisoft to 49.9% last month, as a potential banner for future moves.
Why It's Worth Knowing: Why the change? Tencent and Netease have both had trouble in their home region of China, as regulators decline to approve their new games. Feeling the belt tightening at home in terms of future growth, both companies have to look beyond China. Look for more deals similar to Tencent's acquisition of Sumo Group for $1.27 billion, which was approved by the UK High Court earlier this year.
Disco Elysium Developer Departures Kick Off "Auteur" Discourse
Everything started on Saturday, when Martin Luiga, a founding member of Disco Elysium developer ZA/UM announced that he was "dissolving the ZA/UM cultural association" in a Medium post. He also stated that art director Aleksander Rostov, designer Robert Kurvitz, and writer Helen Hindpere had left the studio at the end of 2021. Rostov confirmed this information in a subsequent tweet. In an interview with GamePressure, Luiga said the others were "fired on false premises."
Why It's Worth Knowing: ZA/UM still exists as a company of course, but the names listed are a strong part of the core team behind the original Disco Elysium. The world behind the game was based on a tabletop setting created by Kurvitz, who also designed the game and wrote a hefty amount of dialogue. There are likely still talented developers at ZA/UM who might make something amazing, but if you were waiting for a Disco Elysium sequel, those hopes are pretty deflated.
This divide between those who lament the loss of original team members and those who want people to still stand behind what remains of ZA/UM, has driven a ton of discussion about game development and "auteurs" in particular. I'm mostly not getting into all that here.
Overwatch 2 Launches To Big Server Queues
Overwatch died so that Overwatch 2 might live. This week, Blizzard Entertainment took down its once-popular hero shooter with the expectation that players would move onto the sequel. Many players did, only to suffer huge server queues and account migration issues. Blizzard confirmed on Tuesday that some of those issues were caused by DDoS attacks.
Blizzard addressed a number of those problems on the official Overwatch forums, noting that it was hoping to improve overall server stability. Another major problem has been SMS Protect, the system that requires a phone number for account creation. Prepaid accounts and younger players without phones found themselves unable to create Overwatch 2 accounts. Blizzard responded by removing the requirement for existing Overwatch players, but kept it in for new accounts.
Why It's Worth Knowing: Overwatch was a big boon for Blizzard, but the game has fallen on hard times. The studio is trying to recapture the magic with the sequel, but it remains to be seen if it can. There have been some reviews from some outlets, but at the same time player reviews on Metacritic have been bombed out.
Minecraft Streamer Dream Reveals His Face
Minecraft streamer Dream revealed his face on Sunday, with over a million viewers tuning into the premiere. The video on YouTube has 35 million views as of this writing. If you want more insight into everything surrounding Dream, TIME has a great explainer.
Why It's Worth Knowing: You don't get 30.8 million YouTube subscribers or 3.3 million followers on Instagram without contributing to culture in some way. You might not care who Dream is, but highlighting important parts of gaming is why this newsletter exists at all. Welcome to the future of celebrity.
Sony Producing 2 Million PlayStation VR2 Units Ahead of Launch
According to a report by Bloomberg, Sony is going to produce 2 million PlayStation VR2 units by March 2023. The new virtual reality headset for the PlayStation 5 is coming in early 2023. The move to have a host of units ready highlights a stronger push by Sony into virtual reality.
Why It's Worth Knowing: For Sony, the move feels like what dreams are made of. The original PlayStation VR launched on October 13, 2016, with a sell-through of 915,000 units worldwide by February 19, 2017. It didn't reach 1 million units sold until June 2017 and crossed 2 million in December 2017, fourteen months out from launch. Prepping 2 million units ahead of launch points to a stronger push, or Sony knows more about the headset's prospects than we do.
Price is key here, as we're already heading into a recession that's depressing PC sales, so I doubt the audience is clamoring for another $399 (or higher) headset for a system that's already a bit hard to buy.
Tech ⌨️
Google Reveals the Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, and Pixel Watch; Teases The Pixel Tablet
Google might be leaving Stadia behind, but it's still committed to hardware. Yesterday at the Made By Google '22 event, Google announced a whole set of new products for 2022 and 2023.
First up were the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro smartphones. Both phones are powered by the new Tensor G2 processor. The Pixel 7 comes in at $599, sporting a 6.3-inch OLED display, an improved 10.8 megapixel front-facing camera (up from 8 megapixels on the Pixel 6), and 4K 60 FPS support for all cameras. The Pixel 7 Pro costs $899, with a new Ultrawide lens with Macro support, an improved 48 megapixel telephoto lens with 5x optical zoom and 30x Super Res Zoom (up from 4x optical and 20x Super Res), and the same 4K 60 FPS support as its little sibling.
Building on its acquisition of Fitbit in 2021, Google finally introduces the new Pixel Watch. Starting at $349, the standard model has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, and NFC support. The OLED display is protected by Gorilla Glass 5, and the Watch itself sports strong integration with Fitbit, as expected. The screen is one-size-fits-all, though you can change the size of the watch bands, and the 294 mAh battery means 24 hours of life on a single charge. There are no full reviews yet, but The Verge, Engadget, Android Police, and others all got hands-on with the device.
The interesting bit of news was the reveal of the Pixel Tablet. Few details were offered about the device, which is planned for a 2023 release. The company stopped making tablets in 2019, after the Pixel Slate, which is a shame because I always liked their offerings. (I had a Nexus 7 way back in the day.)
Google explained its thinking behind the device in the last 10 minutes of the event, highlighting the device's charging speaker dock as well. The dock turns the tablet into a home smart display, similar to the Google Nest Hub, Amazon Echo Show, or Meta Portal. No price was given for the Tablet or the dock.
Why It's Worth Knowing: Samsung tends to rule the roost in terms of Android devices, but I've always enjoyed the pure expression of Android from Google's Pixel devices. They also work as sort of a benchmark that other manufacturers shouldn't fall under.
ByteDance Opens Pre-Orders For Its Meta Quest 2 Competitor
If you're looking for a wireless virtual reality headset but you don't want to step into the Meta ecosystem, you now have another option. ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, has opened pre-orders for the Pico 4 in Europe. The device is based around the same Qualcomm XR2 as the Meta Quest 2, with 8 GB of RAM, 128/256 GB of storage, and a 5,300 battery. If you live in the Europe, you can pick it up from places like Bestware or VR Expert, starting at € 429. TechRadar has a more comprehensive comparison between the competing devices.
Of course, Meta is currently working on the Quest 3, which is rumored to be twice as powerful as the previous model and the Pico 4. The strength will come from the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset, but the major question is the price point of the device. Remember, Meta increased the price of the Quest 2 by $100 earlier this year.
Apple and Activision Blizzard Take Hits From US Labor Board
The US National Labor Relations Board weighed in on two situations involving potential unions this week. The federal agency is set up to ensure that private employees have the join together, with or without a union, to improve their working conditions. According to Bloomberg, the NLRB issued a complaint against Apple, following a complaint by the Communications Workers of America stating that the company interrogated staff, removed union flyers, and made employees attend anti-union speeches at its New York store.
Likewise, the NLRB found that Activision Blizzard illegally withheld wage increases from QA testers at Raven Software who were in the middle of forming a union. "Despite their best efforts, Activision’s constant attempts to undermine its workers’ and impede our union election have failed. We’re glad the NLRB recognized that Activision acted illegally when they unequally enforced policies by withholding company-wide benefits and wage increase from Raven workers for organizing," said the Game Workers Alliance, which represents those employees.
Why It's Worth Knowing: Labor organizing to get better wages and working conditions is good!
The Twitter-Elon Musk Saga Rollercoaster Continues
The legal battle between Twitter and Elon Musk was scheduled to begin court proceedings on October 17, but earlier this week, the billionaire decided that he was putting his offer for the company back on the table. Despite the weeks of waffling from Musk, his legal team informed Twitter on Tuesday that he intended to close his proposed $44 billion ($54.20 per share) acquisition of the company.
It's been a bizarre time, as Musk was unable to get out of the deal despite his best efforts. Of course, now he can't immediately slide into the deal either. In a court filing, Musk's legal team stated that "Twitter will not take yes for an answer," and noted that the company intended to proceed with the trial.
Twitter's lawyers argue that Musk has offered the deal in order to stall the trial. "Now, on the eve of trial, Defendants declare they intend to close after all. 'Trust us,' they say, 'we mean it this time,' and so they ask to be relieved from a reckoning on the merits," says Twitter's document. "Defendants’ proposal is an invitation to further mischief and delay.
Judge Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery put the upcoming case on hold until the deal closes on October 28, 2022. If the deal doesn't close by then, then both parties have to contact the court to get a new November trial date.
Of course, one issue is Musk's planned funding is much shakier now. If his debt financing does fall apart, Musk can walk away from the deal, but has to pay a $1 billion break-up fee. Of course, that's probably better than paying $44 billion for Twitter.
Film, Television, and Streaming 🎞️
The First Trailer For The Super Mario Bros Movie Releases
For months, we've been wondering what the collaboration between Nintendo, Universal Pictures, and Illumination was going to look like. During New York Comic Con, Nintendo aired a Nintendo Direct showcasing the first teaser trailer for the film. The official title is The Super Mario Bros. Movie. It's planned for release on April 7, 2023.
The trailer itself features some of the voice work from the cast, including Chris Pratt as Mario, Keegan Michael Key as Toad, and Jack Black as Bowser. While the latter two voices have seen a positive reception, fans have seemingly nothing but jokes for Pratt's Mario, which sounds like only a hint of Jersey over Pratt's normal voice. It's the La Croix of voice acting, especially for a the Italian plumber. Fans point to the French and Italian trailers for something closer to what they expected.
Why It's Worth Knowing: Nintendo has been reticent to let its properties play outside of video games. A successful Mario movie could change that, opening the door to other adaptations like The Legend of Zelda or Metroid. Combined with Illumination's great track record at the box office, the Super Mario Bros. Movie could be a big hit.
The CW Executives Leave Following Nexstar Acquisition
Big changes are coming at the CW. The network was a joint venture of Time Warner (now Warner Bros Discovery) and CBS (a part of Paramount Global) for years, but that's all over now. Nexstar Media Group has closed a deal to acquire 75% of the network, with WBD and Paramount retaining 12.5% ownership stakes. Like many sell-offs, neither company wanted to deal with this vestigial tail in the era of streaming.
The CW CEO Mark Pedowitz is stepping down once the transition in ownership is complete. President of Streaming Rick Haskins and finance chief officer Mitch Nedick are following him out the door. They certainly won't be the last executives to leave as the CW transitions from scripted programming to more unscripted, sports, and news-related shows. Nexstar is the largest owner of local TV stations in the United States, and it wants the CW to have programming that likely reflects that audience, while also being much cheaper.
Why It's Worth Knowing: The CW was the home for a good deal of genre television, young-skewing shows, and programs that featured more queer characters overall. The oncoming change in ownership already saw a number of those shows canceled completely, and it's unlikely they're returning elsewhere. This is essentially a sea change at one network and there's unlikely to be anything to take its place.
Comics and Manga 💭
This section won't always exist because there's not always a ton of actual news here, but I do like to check in from time-to-time. This weekend marks New York Comic-Con 2022, so we will have a bit of news coming down the pipeline.
DC Follows Its Dawn With Lazarus Planet
DC Comics hasn't had the best run of things lately. In terms of sales in the direct market, rival Marvel Comics is currently running roughshod over the competition. There's also been a bit of lull in the line in terms of direction and marketing; it doesn't help that DC Comics is a small part of Warner Bros. Discovery, a company undergoing huge changes.
Currently, the line is embroiled within the crossover Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, which will end with the Dawn of the DCU. At NYCC, DC Comics revealed its next event, which promises a great deal of change and upheaval. Lazarus Planet will see the Lazarus Volcano, an object related to the life-giving Lazarus Pits from the Batman mythos, erupting across Earth. The event promises "Heroes transformed. Secrets revealed. Powers unleashed."
Even showrunner Mark Waid will be joined by Riccardo Federici, Gene Luen Yang, Billy Tan, Nicole Maines, Skylar Patridge, Francis Manapul, Dan Watters, Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Josie Campbell, and more. Batman, Cyborg, Martian Manhunter, Robin (Damien Wayne), Power Girl, and Superman (Jon Kent) look to be getting the focus this time around. The event will start in January and end in mid-February.
Why It's Worth Knowing: The event lookis to be a way to differentiate some existing characters and give others a bit more shine. DC Comics does need to firm up its line beyond more than just Batman, and this event could be the proper start to that.
On The Calendar 📅
Here's the interesting stuff that's coming over the next week or so.
Steam Next Fest (Demos and Deals on Steam) - October 3-10
New York Comic-Con 2022 - October 6-9
TwitchCon - October 7-9
PAX Aus 2022 - October 7-9
Chainsaw Man (Anime Premiere - Crunchyroll) - October 11
Gamescom Asia 2022 - October 20-23