Monthly Archives: December 2015
League of Legends’s Gravity Gaming Bought by Rick Fox
It was announced yesterday that former professional basketball player Rick Fox is the new owner of North American League of Legends team Gravity Gaming.
ESPN reporter Darren Rovell revealed on Twitter that the team will be rebranded as Echo Fox. Earlier this month, The Daily Dot reported that the team sold for $1 million, though the buyer was unknown at that time.
Former NBA player Rick Fox has purchased eSports team Gravity. Will rebrand as Echo Fox for next competition in League of Legends.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) December 18, 2015
Coleco Announces New Cartridge-Based Console
In a partnership with Retro Video Game Systems, Coleco has announced a new cartridge-based console system called the COLECO Chameleon.
Chameleon comes a little over 30 years after the company's Colecovision, which made IGN's list of the top 25 video game consoles of all time. Released in 1982, Colecovision was known for bringing popular arcade games into the home.
Coleco claims the Chameleon will be "a versatile new video game system that serves as a modern day take on the classic game console," and is promised to "accurately play classic games." The system will also play new 8-, 16-, and 32-bit games, all in the spirit of the "golden age of gaming."
Microsoft Highlights ‘Your 2015 Year in Review’
Microsoft's new "Your 2015 Year In Review" site analyzes your Xbox gaming practices and shows how you stack up against the community and your friends.
To access your stats, login to the Xbox year in review page. Your report will show up there. You'll be able to see how many hours you've logged in Xbox Live in 2015, how many points you've added to your gamerscore, your most active day, and your most played game. Microsoft also shows how many hours you've spent playing Halo 5, among other things.
The site displays where you rank within the community for a variety of categories—for things like gamerscore, achievements, and time played. You'll also find out what your friends have been playing in 2015, and how long they've been playing those games.
New Star Wars: The Force Awakens Cards Reveal Weapons, Concept Art, and More
Update: Every single person that leaves their Star Wars Card Trader in-game fan name in the comments below will be gifted a free Modernography insert!
The worldwide launch of Star Wars: The Force Awakens has lead to an explosion of new digital trading cards in Topps' iOS and Android app Star Wars Card Trader.
For the uninitiated, Star Wars Card Trader lets you crack packs of virtual trading cards, which will mostly contain "base" cards of varying rarity. Occasionally lucky players may pull a rare "insert" card, however. Collecting all the inserts in a set usually awards players with an extra-rare award card, encouraging players to barter and trade with one another, getting rid of their duplicate cards to collect any they haven't yet tracked down. Although selling digital trading cards is techincally against the SWCT Terms of Service, it isn't uncommon to see especially sought ultra-rare cards sell for $100 or more on services like Ebay - digital trading cards have become serious business for lots of fans.
Star Wars Actor Was Fired From Dante’s Inferno Game
Star Wars: The Force Awakens actor Oscar Isaac has revealed that he was originally attached to Visceral Games' Dante's Inferno before getting fired.
Speaking with BirthMoviesDeath, Isaac was questioned whether Disney Infinity: 3.0 Edition was his first voice acting role. "I had done a video game before, but I got fired off it," he said, referring to Dante's Inferno from Electronic Arts.
But why did the Poe Dameron actor get the boot? "I think they just thought I was bad," Isaac said. "It was such a shitty game, though. Dante’s Inferno."
Apple Hit With Class-Action Lawsuit for iPhone 5 Wi-Fi Defect
Apple was hit by a class action lawsuit on Thursday that claims the company knew about a defect in the iPhone 5 line of smartphones that could result in high cell data usage.
The lawsuit, filed by consumer-rights law firm Hagens Berman, explains that the defect would occur when an iPhone 5 user "streamed high volumes of data for a period of 10-20 minutes." During this time, the hardware's GPU would take control of all video decompression, decoding and presentation, making the CPU unneeded. The CPU would then go to sleep in order to conserve its battery life, but the phone would then switch from streaming via Wi-Fi to LTE.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens Used 7 Different BB-8s
Bringing Star Wars' lovable new droid to the big screen was no small task, as several different versions of BB-8 were used when filming Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
"We weren't really sure whether it was possible to achieve BB-8 physically," senior animatronic designer Joshua Lee told NPR. "In fact, it was only about a week to go before filming began that we actually had the physical droids there for J.J. to look at."
Lee then revealed that "seven different versions of BB-8" were built in order "to get all the shots" they needed, with Matthew Denton, who supervised the film's electronic design and development, chiming in to note "they all got nicknames."
Wonder Woman: Robin Wright Not Taking Kidman’s Role
While Nicole Kidman was in talks for a major role in Wonder Woman, the full cast list has since confirmed the deal fell through, and it was widely assumed Robin Wright was taking her place.
According to Variety's Justin Kroll, however, that's actually not the case, as Wright has reportedly been cast for a different role entirely. Kroll claims that Kidman wasn’t able to take the role because of a scheduling conflict and the studio is still deciding who should fill the void.
Batman v Superman: Bruce Wayne Has a ‘Void in His Soul’
Ben Affleck's portrayal of Bruce Wayne in Batman v Superman will be a bit different than Christopher Nolan's take on the character in the Dark Knight trilogy, as Dawn of Justice plays "a bit more with the billionaire playboy side of the character."
In an interview with Studio Ciné Live (via THR), Affleck shared a few new details on the hero's daytime persona and the emotional emptiness that drives him.
"He lives that life at full tilt," Affleck said. "He courts many women, owns many cars, and parties a lot. He does that as a way to fill the void in his soul. Moreover, past incarnations dealt with a straightforward search for justice. This time, Batman’s reasoning is clouded by frustration, bitterness and anger."
5 The Force Awakens Theories That Were Completely and Totally Wrong
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is in theaters worldwide, cleaning up at the box office and receiving positive reviews almost across the board. The first Star Wars movie in a decade, The Force Awakens opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for future adventures of familiar and new characters.
It's easy to argue that this is one of the most hyped movies of all time, and the level of secrecy surrounding the film's release led many people (ourselves included) to try to speculate what would happen in The Force Awakens before it came out. Some of those theories were pretty on the money, but now that we've seen the film we also know which ones were completely off base.