Monthly Archives: January 2016

Two Studios Merge to Form New UK Games Publisher

The Catalis Group, parent company of Kuju Entertainment and Testronic, has acquired Curve Digital.

This deal will see the formation of Curve Digital Entertainment within Catalis which will be comprised of Curve Digital Publishing and Kuju Entertainment.

The CEO of Catalis is Dominic Wheatley, who co-founded Eidos Interactive before it was acquired by Square Enix in 2009. He said: "Our acquisition of Curve Digital and merging them with Kuju means we have created the potential for a major new British games publisher, the first of its kind for many years."

"It’s also good news for the UK indie games community to have a professional publishing partner who can take their titles to the international market," Wheatley continued.

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Oculus Founder Apologizes for an Unrealistic VR Estimate

The recently-announced price of the highly anticipated Oculus Rift has led founder Palmer Luckey to apologize to fans.

Speaking during a Reddit AMA on Wednesday, the 23-year-old entrepreneur said the following:

"I handled the messaging poorly," says Luckey, "my answer was ill prepared, and mentally, I was contrasting $349 with $1500, not our internal estimate that hovered close to $599

I apologize."

Palmer also explains that, even though the headset is expensive, the company isn’t making any profit and is "prioritizing quality over cost."

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Doom Possible Release Date Leaked by Amazon France

Doom will be releasing on all platforms June 30, at least if the product listing on Amazon's French site is to be believed.

Spotted by Twitter user MasterGamer24680, all versions of the game show the same release date and price.

Of course, it's entirely possible that the date is merely a placeholder, or possibly a mistake, but Amazon France has spilled the beans on releases in the past, so it isn't outside the realm of plausibility. For instance, Amazon France listed Rise of the Tomb Raider for PC would release at the end of January, something that turned out to be 100% true. It also

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Rogue One Actor Ben Mendelsohn May Be Up for Ready Player One

Ben Mendelsohn is reportedly up for the villain's role in Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Ready Player One. So say anonymous sources to The Hollyword Reporter, anyway.

If true, that would put Mendelsohn, who currently stars in the Netflix original series Bloodline, in the role of Nolan Sorrento. In Earnest Cline's novel of the same name Sorrento is an high-ranking ISP employee who intends to take over — and monetize — the unsupervised virtual world of OASIS.

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New FOX Animated Series Project From Gravity Falls Creator

FOX has ordered a script and presentation pilot for a new animated series from Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch.

While details on the series are being kept under wraps, Hirsch offered Variety a small taste, saying, "I'm cooking up some brand-new weirdness." According to the report, Hirsch was pursued by various networks before ultimately reaching an agreement with FOX.

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Eddie Redmayne Was ‘Desperate’ to Play a Weasley in HP Films

Eddie Redmayne would have made a good Weasley boy, wouldn't he have? In a recent interview with on ITV's Lorraine, the actor shared that he was "desperate" to get a role as one of the ginger kids in the Harry Potter series.

"For years I was always like, in the Harry Potter films, there was a whole ginger family, and I never got an audition. And I was like, come on, it's outrageous!" the Oscar winner said.

"Every actor in England was in the Harry Potter films, but I never got the call."

He won't get to play a Weasley, but Redmayne will star as Newt Scamander in J.K. Rowling's Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them. The new film is set several decades before the Harry Potter series begins, and it will follow Scamander through his journey in 1926 New York. Back then, North American wizarding folk were in hiding from the No-Maj—that's people without magic.

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Is Emma Stone Our New Cruella de Vil?

The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Emma Stone is in early negotiations to play the Iconic Disney villainess Cruella de Vil in the upcoming Disney film, Cruella.

Kelly Marcel is writing the script for this Walt Disney Studios film, Andrew Gunn is producing, and Kristin Burr and Jessica Virtue are overseeing this project. This production has yet to have a director attached to the project, but the studio's goal is to start shooting the film later this year.

The character Cruella de Vil originally originated from Dodie Smith’s 1965 book, “The Hundred and One Dalmatians.” Cruella also made her first appearance in film as the main villain in the 1961 animated classic and has been portrayed by Glenn Close in the live action movie 101 Dalmatians and its sequel 102 Dalmatians.

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3 New Yu-Gi-Oh! Games Coming in 2016

To celebrate the franchise's 20th anniversary, three new Yu-Gi-Oh! games will be released before the end of 2016, Konami announced today.

The first, titled Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links, will be released on iOS and Android this spring. A new 3DS game will follow in the summer, with an online game for unspecified consoles and PC closing things out this winter.

Additionally, Konami announced major updates will hit both its latest Yu-Gi-Oh! console game, Legacy of the Duelist, and mobile game, Duel Generation, at some point this year.

For more, check out Episode 9 of IGN's Anime Club, in which IGN editors discuss whether Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokemon, or Digimon is the best franchise.

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Unlocked: Our Xbox Predictions for 2016

NOTE: The video episode will be up tomorrow (Thursday).

DOWNLOAD UNLOCKED 227 (Audio version)

 Happy New Year! We kick things off with our longest episode ever! Gone Home creator Steve Gaynor (who you may also know as the creator of BioShock 2's highly acclaimed DLC Minerva's Den) sits in for the whole show to talk about next week's Xbox One release of Gone Home. We also ask him about his time on BioShock 2 as well as his next game, the Xbox One-exclusive Tacoma. Plus: we make our Xbox predictions for 2016 and review how we did with our 2015 predictions. And we discuss the Scalebound delay, the Assassin's Creed leak, and much more!

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